Remember Me Babe?
by RaeLaser1
Summary: Beetlejuice reflects on his lost oppurtunity with Lydia. He manages to find a way back to her, but fate conspires to keep them apart. COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice! Nope, still not mine!**

* * *

Beetlejuice sat on his lumpy chair, examining a small shiny object in his hand. It was the ring he had tried to give Lydia Deetz. He hadn't quite managed to get it on her finger before . . .

That horrible, evil bitch. How the hell had she gotten on that damned sandworms back anyways? Why hadn't she been eaten instead of him?

He was mad at Lydia, for wasting his time when he was trying to marry her, but it was nothing he could sustain, nothing that he could really get furious about. The Maitland's, however, were another story. He wished they were alive, if only so he could kill them again. He grinned, imagining that scene.

Why couldn't they have just left him alone, and let him marry his pretty bride? True, she was a bit young, but mortals got older, right? They got older quickly. Beetlejuice scowled. She was probably an eighty-year-old woman by now. Time worked like that once you were dead. It just seemed to slip away.

He remembered the look of fear on Lydia's face, the look of disgust. He remembered how she had tried to shout out his name. But as he thought about it, he remembered something else that had been bothering him.

After he had uncovered her mouth, and finished using her voice, she had had plenty of time to say his name and send him back. But she didn't. The whole while that those stupid hick ghosts had been attacking him, she had just stood there patiently. He winced, remembering that he had left an opening for her. But she hadn't used it. Why? Could it be that . . . no. He wouldn't even think something like that, not to himself, not to anybody. It was too late now; he might as well accept that he would never see her again.

But the memories came, they wouldn't stop. The terror on her face when she had seen him as a snake. The look of confusion, then realization as she figured out his name. And all the many, varied looks of disgust she had given him.

He lit up, and started smoking. He scratched at some of the mold growing from under his hair and scowled. Maybe she would have reacted better if he hadn't been mossy and smelly. Breathers didn't like mold, did they?

The ring sparkled in front of him. It wasn't an unattractive ring, a thick, brassy deal, with a foreign-looking stone in it. Beetlejuice fought the temptation to toss it in the fireplace.

Finally, he sighed and stood up. A small germ of an idea blossomed in his mind. He would hold off on the bio-exorcism for now. Instead, he would try to pinpoint attractive women, and try to get a sappy message across. Something about how he was suffering, and please let him out, he needed help, or some other sappy shit like that. Then he would con them into marrying him.

He walked across the room, and slowly picked up a picture frame, turned on its face. Inside, was a rough likeness of Lydia.

He slapped it back down sharply, sighing heavily. He pulled on his suit, resulting in it becoming even more crooked.

He had to move on and forget. He had breathers to con.

:fin:

**Well, whaddya think? If you love it, tell me! If you think its ok, tell me! If you hate it, tell me even then!!!**

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	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2 

Beetlejuice stared at the ceiling, cursing it fervently. He had sent out fliers, TV ads, and subliminal dream messages, all many, many weeks ago, and he had not been called once. The lack of response might have been the fact that he had directed his attention towards a human audience, who were much less receptive to that sort of thing, but still. Someone should've been curious enough to call his name.

This wasn't working. Well, it could possibly have worked for someone with a vast amount of patience and resources, but Beetlejuice had neither. He needed a new plan. But he had had over six hundred years to think of plans, and somehow, they always found ways to backfire on him.

Maybe it was time he read the damn handbook. He might possibly be able to fish something out of its cloudy depths that could help him.

One pounding headache and six Tylenol later, he found what he was looking for.

_The deceased, by use of a reflective surface, might on occasion utilize the occasion of observing the outerworld through the surface, thereby rendering the viewer, and those whom are viewed, visible each to the other, and to a limited degree, capable of contact. This practice is not advised, as it has led to many exorcisms_

Bingo.

He scoffed at the mention of exorcism. Beetlejuice exorcised? The self-proclaimed, "Ghost with the Most"?

Bah. Not gonna happen.

Now to find a mirror.

Beetlejuice tore up his room, searching frantically for a mirror, overturning boxes and picture frames, a gila monster, and other things better left unnamed. Finding nothing, he resorted to going through his pockets. A pipe cleaner twisted to look like a spring; several snakes; a spear; a cow stomach in a jar; innumerable beetles; a rat; a surprising amount of monarch butterflies; a vial of cobra poison; the book Moby Dick; another picture of Lydia he drew himself, which he hurriedly set aside; a human hand; a baby grand piano ("Where did that come from?" he wondered) a packet filled with human toenails; and finally . . .

A lady's compact and mirror! He gave an unholy shriek of triumph, and snapped it open. To his disappointment, the mirror wasn't even big enough to fit his hand through, but it would have to work, until he could steal a bigger one. He sneezed, spilling the dust everywhere. Putting one eye up to the smeary silvered surface, he concentrated on . . . Damn. Which house should he concentrate on?

He remembered a nice beach house in California he could terrorize. But there was a lot of kooks in California, a lot of superstition disguised as trendiness, and there might possibly be someone there who knew how to deal with poltergeists. His thoughts turned elsewhere.

_The Deetz household_, a tantalizing thought in the corner of his mind sang out. He gritted his teeth, and thought about Germany. Nice place, a little cold, but . . . Dammit, no! He would not got to the Deetz's!

And because he was concentrating so hard on not wanting to go to the Deetz's, that's exactly where he ended up. The glass rippled, and he was suddenly looking at a kitchen, drastically different than the one he remembered. This was all cherry wood, and warm, bright colors. Copper pans were hanging over the stove; the counter was light green marble, or something similar. The walls were painted the lightest shade of tan possible.

Suddenly, everything lurched forward, and to the side. Beetlejuice found himself staring at a wall, nose to nose.

"What the?" he wondered, but then, everything lurched back, and the short, but nauseating ride began again, this time in reverse.

Beetlejuice realized he must be looking through a doorknob, as everything suddenly spun upside down. He groaned quietly, and once things settled down, he looked around intently, searching for a familiar face.

He saw a thick bush of blonde, preppy looking hair, instead. Blonde as she most certainly was, she was also deadly pale, and wore very red lipstick, and a very loud plaid skirt. She looked like the devil incarnate. Her eyes were small and set close together, marred by crow's feet spreading from their corners, and of an indefinite color. She was thin as a rake.

Behind her trod a man, with raven black hair, touched with gray. He turned around, and Beetlejuice felt something akin to a kick in the stomach. The man had every single one of Lydia's features, broadened and more masculine, but there it was. This was either her son, or her brother. Beetlejuice was willing to bet it was her son.

"Oh Eddie!" trilled the blonde. She had a lovely voice, but there was an unpleasant hard edge to it. Beetlejuice hated her at first sight. "What is it Fantasy?" the man sighed.

Beetlejuice almost choked. Fantasy? Was that her name? What kind of messed up joke was this?!

"Serafina has shut herself in her room," 'Fantasy' said flatly.

"I'll talk to her," he said.

Beetlejuice was intrigued. He began trying to perfect the art of mirror hopping. Thank goodness this 'Eddie' was wearing dog tags!

Eddie traveled up a flight of stairs. Beetlejuice's eyes widened when he looked at the railing he had possessed, and made into the Beetlesnake. It was hard to believe it had survived the years. He chuckled. Good times.

They finally approached a room. Eddie knocked on the door.

"Leave me alone, dad!" shouted a voice from within.

"Sara, I just want to talk," her father said soothingly. "You shouldn't fight with your mother like that. You know she always finds a way to pay you back in the end."

A young girl, who looked to be about eighteen, poked her head out the door. She bore very little resemblance to Lydia. "This isn't even close to the end," she snarled angrily. She slammed the door, but not before Beetlejuice jumped to the mirror hanging on her wall.

He watched carefully as she flung herself onto the bed. Almost everything in the room was dark red. The trimmings were silver and white, and the carpet was black. A couple of plastic stars adorned the ceiling, glowing faintly. He sighed and curled his lip. He just didn't like the juvenile touch that those stars suggested. And it all seemed . . . tacky somehow. Like she was faking it.

Just for one moment, he allowed himself the pleasure of thinking about Lydia, of missing her. Then he stuffed it down, and prepared to reveal himself to this little mortal girl, who had no idea who was about to come crashing down on her little world.

Little. Yes, that was the word. Looking out from the silvered surface of the mirror, everything on the other side seemed like cardboard cutouts, flat and flimsy. He felt strangely disappointed, and disillusioned. He felt like maybe he'd outgrown this world, depressing as that may sound.

This wasn't like him. He obviously needed this gig, to take his mind off this strange habit he had picked up of brooding and worrying, and feeling depressed. That's what it was! He was depressed! He obviously needed to have some fun, liven – "or deaden!" he cackled to himself – things up.

Once again, he prepared himself, but then was struck by a thought. He had repulsed Lydia. Might not this girl, too, be repulsed? He ran a quick eye over himself. Dusty, moldy . . . there wasn't much wrong with that by the standards of the dead, especially one who hearkened back so far, and had died in the conditions he did. But the living had a problem with it for some reason.

He hesitated, then reluctantly zapped away what he had come to consider his seond skin. After all, he wasn't going for a haunting this time around, he was attempting wooing. Deciding he might as well go the distance, he fastidiously pulled on his suit, making it even more crooked than before, and self-consciously pulled the ratty pillow out from underneath his shirt.

For the third time, he returned his attention to the breather before him. But then a sight met his eyes that made him drop his jaw. He absent-mindedly picked it up again, and fit it back into place.

Lydia had drifted into the room, going straight through the wall. She didn't look a day older than thirty-five. Her complexion was waxen, and slightly blue, and there was a small hole in her neck, just below her chin. She looked very dead. Her black hair had just one silvery strand in it; the rest was still as black as he remembered. She had most certainly filled out in all the right places since he last saw her.

"Babe?" Beetlejuice spluttered.

-- 


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3 

Lydia's head snapped around, and she fixed him with a cold, angry gaze. Beetlejuice clutched the sides of the mirror, and tried desperately to pull himself through. How unfortunate that he was looking through a mirror smaller than the palm of his hand.

"You," Lydia said simply. Beetlejuice's smile faded. She didn't seem happy to see him.

"Lyds!" he cried again, spreading his arms. "I'm back. Can't keep me down!" he said, winking roguishly. At least he thought it was roguish. On him it was just creepy.

"You're not welcome here," Lydia said. With that she raised her arms. Before Beetlejuice could react, the mirror he was looking through was hit with her energy.

Paralyzed by surprise, he could only watched as the glass peeled back around him. The dead skin on his face rippled, and a powerful blast ripped his fingers loose from around the mirror frame.

As he fell, he thought he heard a child scream in a high-pitched, panicky voice. But he couldn't be sure of anything now, because it was all fading, and even with all his formidable powers, he could not stop it, could not bring it back.

And then with a bump, he was sitting on his dirty floor in his grave, and he realized why everything had vanished, as his mirror crumbled into ashes in his hand.

Did he say he missed Lydia?

He went over to the table, where he picked up his picture of her, and then threw it on the ground, jumping up and down on it. If he could see that ghost for just one minute he would beat her ass so hard she would never forget it! But speaking of her ass . . . He groaned, remembering how good she had looked.

He paused, and then half-heartedly resumed stomping on her picture. After a minute he sighed and picked up the picture - much worse for the wear - and put it back up.

He lay down on the floor, his usual resting place, and thought about what he had seen. A cheap looking broad who was probably as tacky as Delia. A miserable looking man who was obviously Lydia's son. A miserable looking girl, who was quite obviously very childish. A very odd family, by all accounts. In fact, they all looked miserable, Fantasy included.

They were perfect, the type he loved to scare, or take advantage of the most. How to get back was the first problem. How to use that family to his benefit was the second. How to use that family to his benefit without Lydia finding out was the third. True, he was much more powerful than her, but she knew how to send him back. And she could always catch him off guard.

"Like she just did!" he moaned to himself.

He suddenly stood still, a devious thought entering his mind. Thanks to his unexpected visit, he now knew the house's location in space. With a great deal of effort and concentration, he could possibly send things there. But what to send? What would be a sure thing to get him out? And who to send it to? Not Lydia, she had made her position quite clear already. Eddie looked like too much of a stick in the mud. The daughter, what was her name, Sara? She looked too stupid to know to do anything. So Fantasy . . . the more he thought about it, the more he realized how perfect she might be, if she was the type of person he thought she was, flaky and gullible. And he was never wrong about people. Well, maybe he _was_ wrong a lot, but it wasn't like he was going to tell anyone that. Besides, his freedom rested in the hope that he was right.

Now, what should he send her? A snake? No, that would be funny, but it wouldn't help him. A note? No, that would require being specific and explaining things, a definite no-no. Maybe he could find something else. He tore around the room once again. Fortunately, his search was short this time. With a cry of unholy delight, he held aloft his prize.

An ouija board. It was perfect! He would just have to make adjustments, like making sure the board pinpointed him, and only him. Wouldn't want to release any demons in the outerworld, he chuckled to himself, zapping the board and implements. For a final touch, he burned his name onto the board as a background. Maybe she would say it without any prompting at all!

He did a dance around the room, hugging the board fondly. Finally, he got tired, and raised the board up in the air. He closed his eyes and concentrated hard, making sure to hold the house and its location in space firmly in his mind. After a minute, the board disappeared in a flash of sickly yellow light.

He did a little dance again. Now all that was left was – waiting. He plopped down on his lumpy chair, all his enthusiasm gone. Waiting. How he hated waiting.

-- 


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4 

As it ended up, he had to wait over two weeks, as he had quite by accident zapped the ouija board in the very back of Fantasy's closet. She found it when she was on her knees in her closet, searching for the tallest pumps she could find.

Fantasy was an enigma to her husband Eddie, but it was all too glaringly obvious to Fantasy herself, no matter how she tried to push it back. She couldn't let go of her youth. She had been the star in high school and college, prom queen, captain of the cheerleaders, best dressed, prettiest, smartest, funniest, coolest. She had dated the captain of the football team, and then gotten engaged to her present husband, the college's official Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome. She had had it all, but over the years, it all vanished, and she was left with nothing, because her life had been centered in school.

So she tried to relive it, dressing in the styles that teens liked at the moment, which was not a way that was appropriate for a wife and mother. She tried to impress all her daughter's friends that came over by acting like one of them, and was scorned for her efforts. She tried to act the part of a diva still. And because she knew that Sara would not have fit in with the clique that Fantasy had been part of, she treated her daughter with scorn.

She knew it was wrong. But she couldn't help it.

So Fantasy was in an unusually foul mood that day when she was digging in her closet. She had heard her daughter's friends snickering about how 'weird' she was when they thought she wasn't listening. But she was always listening, for compliments and insults alike. You couldn't hide them from her.

She slapped around in the dark closet, searching for her shoe's mate, when she knocked the board over. Curious, she dragged it out. Her mascara and eyeliner ridden eyes widened.

"An ouija board?" she asked herself. "I don't recall ever seeing this before!"

She noticed a yellowed note on its surface and read it aloud. "Use me!" it read. She frowned and tapped her dark red lips.

"I've always wondered about ghosts and such," she mused. "I wonder if this is one's way of trying to communicate with me!"

She peered at it closer. Just barely visible, like it was a natural part of the grain of the wood, was the word Betelgeuse.

"Hmm. Bettelgoose?" Fantasy asked herself. "Beetlegeeze?" Fantasy put the board under her arm and marched over to the computer, a strange light in her eyes. Sitting down, she typed the name quickly into a search engine, and waited for results.

"Hmm. Beetlejuice! (1) What an unpleasant word. I wonder why it's spelled so strangely. Oh well, perhaps it is Latin. Beetlejuice (2). I wonder why that was on the board? Perhaps it's just a coincidence, maybe it just looks funny, warped by time or some such."

She picked up the board and peered at it again, troubled. "No, the word Beetlejuice (3) is definitely – what was that?!"

Her only answer was a manic cackle of triumph.

--

Beetlejuice swirled up towards the ceiling, rolling and cackling in his pure joy. He was out! He was free! Temporarily of course – oh shit. Where was the woman?!

He spotted her collapsed on the floor staring around wildly, her spindly limbs out at awkward angles. She stood up and looked around.

"Beetle –" she started tentatively.

Beetlejuice panicked. He launched himself forward, grabbed Fantasy around the waist, and laid a deep one on her, squeezing her ass while he was at it. He suddenly dropped her and let her lay where she fell, as she sputtered in rage and kicked her heels against the floor like a spoiled child. Beetlejuice laughed, and then started speaking as fast as he could, trying to keep her from saying his name again.

"Hey, I gotta thank ya Babe! Ya didn't have to let me out, but ya did! Lord, you've got a big mouth, I was starting to wonder if you even had tonsils, had my tongue in there and it just seemed to never end! I've been waiting for weeks, didn't think you'd ever find the board I sent you! Speaking of which I'll just take that ouija board back, you really don't need that anymore anyways!"

He paused talking for a moment to shove the board into his pocket for safekeeping.

"Anyways, you're an awful kisser, put too much energy in flailing your arms, and not your tongue, whassa matter, don't you know how to flap that thing?"

Fantasy interrupted his monologue with a long, drawn out scream. Nearly five minutes later, her scream petered out.

"You got a good set of lungs there, mind if I ruin 'em for ya?" Beetlejuice cackled, lighting a cigarette.

"Beet –"

He leaped forward, menace glaring out of his green eyes.

_Yes, his eyes are green. Ringed with black. Moldy man. Scary man. Dead. Dead. Dead,_ was the basic pattern of Fantasy's thoughts.

Beetlejuice came up with an ingenious plan while staring at this chick. He stood back and snapped his fingers. Fantasy's head was briefly illuminated, and then suddenly, a word was robbed from her.

"I – I –" she stammered, feeling a small emptiness in her mind where the monster's name used to be.

Beetlejuice roared in triumph. Fantasy crumpled to the floor.

He stared at her a moment, then quickly looked around. Seeing no one, he ducked suddenly, and lifted up her skirt.

After staring a suitable length of time, and making some appreciative noises, he glanced around, then rose up through the ceiling, taking care to make himself invisible.

He found himself staring at Sara again. Just noticeable on her arm, were some poorly written words, stating, "I'm a B!tch!" He groaned, and floated up another floor.

This time, he saw Lydia, staring at the model of the town, ancient and dusty by now. Just for a moment, he had eyes only for her. But gradually he noticed two other presences.

That hick couple, the Maitlands.

He felt his eyes turn red. First things first though. He snapped his fingers, trying out his new trick. To his joy, they all three sat up straight, exchanging startled glances.

"I think I forgot to do something important . . ." Adam murmured, holding his head.

Without a second thought, he sent them to Saturn.

Lydia sat up and screamed, looking around frantically.

Cackling, Beetlejuice made himself visible. Why bother hiding? Not like she could send him back now! He stretched out his arms to her, waggling his fingers.

"Come here and gimme a hug! I missed you babe!" BJ said crooning, an insane light in his eyes.

"Pervert!" Lydia screeched. "What have you done to them?"

"Done to who, babe?" Beetlejuice asked innocently.

"The Maitlands, you freak!"

Beetlejuice kept himself from showing how much that hurt, and smiled at her lazily. "The who's?" he asked.

"The Maitlands! The people you just made disappear!!" she shrieked, her fury reaching fever pitch from his taunting.

"What did I make disappear?" Beetlejuice asked.

Lydia sat down, drained. Then she stood up, eyes narrowed. "You're a pervert," she said. "You're a pervert for wanting to marry a sixteen year-old girl. You're a pervert for staring through my grand-daughter's mirror. How many times have you seen her undressed? Huh?!" she cried, poking him in the chest.

"Whoa! Back up!" he cried, waving his arms. "First of all, your grand-daughter doesn't interest me in the least. I was looking for YOU! Point two, so what if you were sixteen? It wasn't like I was gonna con . . . condone . . . concern . . ."

"Consummate?" Lydia asked sarcastically. "Like I believe that!"

"Wait a minute, who said anything about consuming your mate?" Beetlejuice cried, aghast. "Is that what breathers do in marriage nowadays? I thought only grasshoppers did that!"

"First of all, that's 'praying mantis' you're thinking of; secondly, I really don't wanna argue about that right now, so bye-bye! B . . . B . . . oh shit."

Beetlejuice's grin grew, if possible, wider. "I'm smarter than you think Lyds. I erased my name from your mind. From now on, my dear ghost, you have your own, personal poltergeist shadow!"

Lydia froze, indecision written across her features. Finally she spoke, hoping to intimidate. "I can kick your ass any day, you come a step closer and I'll put you in your second grave!"

Beetlejuice lazily examined his fingernails, not bothering to look at her as he answered. "First of all, you're as weak as a kitten compared to me, you know it, I know it, we both know it, it's settled. Secondly, you want to do any fighting, you're gonna have to find somebody else. I'm a bit of a lazy ghost, I don't usually go for the whole "takes effort" thing."

Lydia stared, completely confused. "Then why the hell are you here?!" she snapped.

"Are you really that dense?" Beetlejuice snapped right back. Then his demeanor changed to lovesick puppy. "I want to MARRY you!" he crooned, reaching for her.

Lydia dodged. "If you haven't noticed, I'm DEAD! You can't get free by marrying me anymore!" she cried out angrily, raising her chin and poking at a bullet hole in her neck.

Beetlejuice rolled forward onto his toes, leaning far into her personal space, and snapped angrily, "That's not what I meant! Don't you -- don't you get it?" Shaking his head like a wet dog, he rolled back on his heels, and smiled as charmingly as one can with brown and green teeth. He made a comical smoochie noise.

"Can't you just accept me?" he mock-pleaded.

Lydia, spooked by his mood swings, backed up slowly. Taking no notice, he popped up into the air, and, pointing menacingly, shrieked, "I'll get you my pretty!! And your little dog, too!!" With that, he sailed out of the room, cackling with laughter.

Lydia watched him go, her eyes bugging out. When had B ever seen the Wizard of Oz?

--


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5 

Fantasy was awakened forty-five minutes later by her husband, who was calmly asking her why she was sleeping on the floor.

She sat bolt upright, and clutched Eddie's lapel jacket. His attempts to disentangle her were in vain.

"Eddie! Monsters!" she gasped. "Man – funny name – dead. An ouija board! Never seen it before. He floated, and he kissed me, and he said mean things about my mouth!" she sobbed.

Eddie, meanwhile was growing more and more confused. So he sat her down, and tried to get the entire story out of her. And once he did, he just nodded understandingly, and went to get her some medication, and maybe a strait jacket

--

Just for a moment, Barbara Maitland felt like she was being pulled through a vacuum cleaner, and being stretched and pulled to fit. Then everything righted itself with a pop, and she landed on a pile of sand. Beside her, she could hear her husband groan.

"Adam, where are we?" Barbara asked nervously. Adam didn't answer. "Adam!" she cried.

"Just look around Barbara," he said in a tired voice. "We're back on Saturn." Barbara stood up and looked around. Sure enough, she saw the unnaturally colored sky, the red sand. Yes, they were definitely on Saturn. Barbara ground her fists into her eyes, and tried to think. "How did we get here?" she wondered aloud. "We didn't leave the house! We weren't _doing_ anything!"

Adam tried to think. "Just before we . . . came here, I was thinking I felt strange," he explained. "Like I'd just forgotten something important." "Maybe it was – it was . . . Adam, I've forgotten his name!" Barbara cried suddenly.

"Whose?" Adam asked, leaning in slightly. Both of them were so absorbed in their conversation, that they did not notice the striped back rising and sinking lazily into the sand.

Barbara racked her memory. She realized she had forgotten more than just his name. "You know, that . . . guy. The one who – The one who tried to marry Lydia! The . . . the bio-exorcist!"

Adam looked at her hard. "Do you think it's a coincidence that right after we disappear into Saturn, where we cannot help Lydia, we forget that thing's name?" he asked.

Barbara shook her head. It was no longer about just them anymore. "We have to help Lydia," she said.

"How, Barbara?" he asked, flapping his arms to demonstrate their helplessness.

Her eyes widened in fear, and she pointed blankly at a high point above his head. Adam didn't waste a moment in looking. He already knew what it was. He tucked his glasses firmly back on his nose and took off, dragging Barbara behind him. He heard the nightmarish scream of the sandworm behind him as it just missed its intended meal.

"A-a-adam!" Barbara panted. "We can fly, remember?"

Adam wanted to take a moment to smack himself in the forehead, but there was no moments left to take. So instead, he launched himself into the air, and hoped he wouldn't get eaten. Behind him, Barbara tried desperately to keep from rolling and flipping midair. She had never been good at this. The sandworm's second head slipped out between its own teeth, almost catching their heels.

They flew desperately, evading the sandworm's strikes with difficulty. Eventually, the monster gave up, and plunged into the sand, roaring in frustration.

They landed inelegantly. Barbara cried a little on Adam's shoulder, but then sat up straight, and tried to think.

"Adam, new ghosts come here all the time. If we could find one, then maybe we could slip back in through their doors," she suggested.

Adam took her shoulders and grinned at her, looking a little crazy. "That's brilliant!" he said, beaming at her.

They set off in the air again, searching intently for opening doorways. After nearly an hour though, Adam began finding faults with the plan.

"We could be doing this for days," he said darkly.

"Nonsense. People die every second," Barbara said defensively.

"Who knows how big Saturn is? Doors could be opening all over the place except where we are."

"Don't be so negative!"

"It could be years before we find ourselves at the right place at the right time. It may NEVER happen!"

"Look! There's a door!" Barbara screamed. They both headed towards the door as fast as they could.

In passing, Barbara shouted to the confused ghost, "You won't like it here. Stay inside, its safer!"

They were so close to safety, she could feel it, almost taste it. She braced herself to slow down as she hit the doorframe, but instead of tumbling into a strange house, she bounced off of an invisible wall, and fell, seemingly into nothingness, where there had been sand only minutes before . . .

--

Beetlejuice was having a major case of the sulks. Lydia had retreated into the attic, after ranting about something silly. Not that he had been listening. He thought he had heard the name, 'Maitland's' once or twice though.

He sighed. This was not going at all the way his idealistic fantasies had gone. Lydia was supposed to be thrilled to see him, not furious, accusing him of this and that. He carelessly snapped a vase, and left small pieces for unwary feet to step on.

He eyed the plasma TV screen with interest. He had sent his ads by way of TV before, of course, but he had never watched the damned thing himself. Maybe there was something to it.

He searched around for a mundane way to turn the monstrosity on, but quickly tired, and ended up just snapping his fingers. Instantly, a deluge of bright flashing colors and loud, evil sounding noises assaulted him. He winced and held his ears. He was sure that if he had epilepsy, he would have had a convulsion, the colors flashed by so quickly and intensely.

He frantically snapped through the channels, and finally found a safe looking scene. A dark alley, two men were facing each other. Suddenly one pulled out a gun, and shot the other. Beetlejuice grinned. The scene switched to that of a woman in a hospital bed with some tubes up her nose. A man sitting next to her was holding her hand, and seemed to be making a confession of love to her. Suddenly she sat up and flung her arms around him, and then explained that it was not she who was injured in the crash, but her evil twin, who was actually killed in said crash. So of course the speaker assumed her place in the hospital to see if the man's love for her was true.

It was absolutely preposterous, ridiculous, and senseless.

Beetlejuice was hooked.

Nine hours later, Eddie meandered in the TV room, looked surprised, and then turned the TV off. It took all Beetlejuice had not to punch him in the neck. While hiding in the corner, Beetlejuice observed something interesting. Lydia walked down the stairs, nearly going right through Eddie. He shivered and paused.

"I love you, Eddie," Lydia said softly, smiling at her baby boy. Oh, but her baby boy had gray hair now, and was raising a baby of his own, who was also no longer a baby. She felt her tears well up.

Eddie however, was still on the staircase, shivering and rubbing his arms. "Ma?" he asked, in the softest of voices. Guessing by the uncertainty in his voice, Eddie had not inherited his mother's skills in seeing ghosts.

Lydia tried to grab his shoulders, but passed right through him. "Yes, it's me Eddie!" she whispered fiercely. "Please don't forget about me. I'm still here. You're still my little boy."

A couple of tears popped from Eddie's eyes, surprising even himself. He quickly wiped them away.

"Oh, mum," he sighed unhappily. "I wish you were still here. I need your wisdom now more than ever. Especially with my family breaking apart the way it is."

He slowly continued up the rest of the staircase, head hanging, his feet dragging.

Lydia stood on the staircase still, fighting back tears. She hated seeing her son hurting like that. With a wife who only loved herself, and a daughter fast following in her footsteps,despite how much she hated her mother. As different as the two were, it was amazing how similar they were.

She sighed again. Fantasy had gotten her revenge for their last argument by humiliating Sara in front of her friends, and driving her boyfriend away from her. Fantasy was an evil woman, pitiable only because of where her evilness had brought her and left her.

Beetlejuice stood and watched Lydia standing on the staircase, deep in thought. He felt a strange feeling in his gut. Could it be – Saints preserve us! – pity? No, surely not. Beetlejuice was a cold hard shell of a man with no finer emotions at all! None! But still, it wouldn't hurt to try and try to talk, her being all vulnerable now and shit.

"I'm sure you had great fun watching us just then, didn't you," Lydia spat. Beetlejuice sighed. So much for vulnerable.

"Hell no, babe, that was about the most awkward thing in the world," he said indignantly. "Wasn't fun at all. It was all . . . emotional," he finished, shuddering.

Lydia changed the subject. "What did you do to the Maitland's?" she asked for what felt like the twentieth time."

Beetlejuice thought fast. It wouldn't do to tell her the truth, she would make him pay for sending them to Saturn. "Uh, I just sent them to Juno's office," he lied. "You know, make them spend months and months filing papers like I had to, once I got eaten by the DAMN SANDWORM!!" he told her, putting emphasis on the last two words. Although, by the way Lydia cringed, she might have considered it closer to yelling.

Lydia had the grace to look ashamed. "I didn't have anything to do with that," she said defensively.

Once again, he was the charmer, flashing a green smile at her. "I know!" he said simply. "That's why you're not – uh – filing papers like they are now!"

"There's something else I've been noticing," Lydia said thoughtfully. "You're _clean_." Remembering his mossy smile, she shivered and amended, "cleaner."

"Ah, that. Yeah, I just decided to clean up for you, Lyds!" he fibbed.

"How nice," Lydia said dryly.

Beetlejuice paused for a moment, then asked bluntly, "How did you die anyways?"

Lydia bristled for a moment, then calmed down, as she wondered where the harm could be in telling him that.

"Well. I was in the gas station, when a neighbor – somebody I knew, actually – came in and held up the store. She demanded money, but I don't think she really wanted it. She wanted attention. And like the dumbass that I am, I tried to be heroic and talk her down. I don't know what I was thinking. It wasn't like we were the best of friends. So she yelled at me to shut up, and then pointed that damn gun at me. Everybody panicked, and someone tried to rush her, and long story short, I got shot. In the neck, right here," she said, lifting her chin and showing the small hole in her neck. Captivated, Beetlejuice asked one question.

"Who was it?"

Lydia looked down. "A girl I knew in school. Her name was Claire."

-- 


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6 

" . . . And so that's how we got into Juno's office without a number," Barbara was explaining to Miss Argentina, the secretary.

"It really was an accident," Adam offered.

Miss Argentina narrowed her eyes vindictively. "An accident? Likely story. You people just try to make my life miserable, don't you? But listen to me now. THIS time, there will be no accidents. Here's your number, take it and sit down."

"7" Adam read. "Not too bad. We'll get in and out of this one pretty quick, Barbara. Barbara?" he said, looking for his wife, who was not responding.

"Adam, look at the number display," Barbara said, her head in her hands. Adam looked. The counter ticked from twelve to thirteen. Craning his head, Adam glanced at their neighbor's number. 12,345,996.

"It's not fair," Adam said.

--

Lydia hummed quietly to herself, as she meditated. Meditation was not something she normally practiced, but she'd try anything that might help her remember his name. If only he wasn't in the same house with her . . .

"Hiya Lyds! Looking for me?"

Speak of the devil.

Lydia gave up trying to remember his name for the moment, and got up to leave.

"Hey, wait!" he cried, feeling hurt. "I got something for ya!" Lydia paused and looked over her shoulder. "I don't want anything you'd give me!" she said frigidly. He winced. Why did her scorn hurt so much?

"I think you're mistaken, Lyds. I have better taste than you think. And after centuries of dealing with women, I know exactly what they like!" Oops, wrong thing to say. He'd better just shut up and give her the damn gift before she froze solid with that icy look she was giving him.

He whipped a bouquet of red and black roses out from behind his back. Lydia's first instinct was to turn her back and walk off, but the momentary glance she took of the flowers took her breath away. These were no ordinary roses. They had no real stems; in their place were long lengths of silvery barbed wire, each nearly two feet long. Wire mesh, thin enough to be thread, was wrapped around the middle of the 'stems,' bound in the middle, so the loose ends flared out hourglass style, making it possible to hold the bouquet without being cut. And the flowers themselves were beautiful, wide open, turning their dark faces up to her, with no sign of wilting or decay among them. They were macabre, bizarre, and beautiful.

Lydia loved them on first sight, but look at who was giving them to her! "I can't take these," Lydia said firmly.

"You already have," Beetlejuice pointed out. Lydia looked down. It was true, they were now in her hands, and she was cradling one of the roses in her hand.

"This changes nothing," Lydia warned.

Beetlejuice's smile slipped a notch. He stood for a moment, tongue-tied for the first time in his afterlife.

Finally, words returned to him.

"Sure! Sure, just . . . I'll just . . . do something over here," he mumbled, walking aimlessly to another part of the room.

Lydia watched him walking, startled by his strange, random movements, and the way he responded to every bit of motion he saw, a book falling off a chair had him whirling towards it, the dogs barking outside made him flinch and walk faster. She didn't understand why he was so jittery. He had the upper hand, after all.

Beetlejuice watched Lydia from the corner of his eye. She was looking off in the distance, a huge frown on her face. He wanted nothing more than to make her smile, but it seemed that in order to do so, he had to stay away.

She'll understand someday. Maybe not though. Maybe she'll always hate me. Maybe I should just give up. She's even more gorgeous than she was before, though. Should I say it? Tell her? Maybe I'll just show her.

His embarrassment passed, he bounced back over to her, and started playing with her hair, which she did not appreciate. Not even a little.

"Get your dirty claws out of my hair!" Lydia spat. He merely cackled and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, and landed a big sloppy kiss on her ear before she managed to get away, and deliver a kick to his shin. On second thought, she should have aimed higher.

Lydia stood glaring and clenching her fists. He wondered if she was upset. "Why won't you just leave me alone?" she finally bellowed. Beetlejuice smiled innocently.

"Because I just adore you," he said, making another smoochie face. He nearly grimaced as he realized how close it was to the truth. That was bad. In his book, you never tell the truth to a woman, because they never want to hear it. This time seemed no exception.

"I don't wanna hear it!" she cried.

Beetlejuice frowned. If she could throw a temper tantrum, then by God, so could he! "Why do you hate me so much!" he bellowed, a pressing question at the moment.

"You tried to marry me!" she cried.

"Most girls would take that as a compliment!" he snapped right back.

"Oh, it didn't matter to you who you married, just so long as I was breathing, had a pulse, and was female, it was fine with you! You would've married DELIA, if it were convenient! If you had really ever thought I was worth something, you would've come when I called!" she shrieked.

Beetlejuice snapped back the retort on the tip of his tongue, and stared at her. "What did you say?" he asked calmly. He was proud of himself; sounding calm when he knew he was about to implode.

Lydia knew she had said too much, but she was too furious to care. "For MONTHS after you came, I tried to call you! And you NEVER CAME BACK!!" she screamed, tears starting to trickle down her cheeks.

Beetlejuice knew two things in that moment. One; that it wasn't hopeless after all. And two. He had a debt to pay with one of the higher ups.

"Lydia, I would've come if I could!" he said desperately. "Somebody was blocking you – blocking me! I can't just not come, it isn't possible. I have to come; it's not my choice. So someone was interfering." And he added privately to himself, I think I know who. Juno, you'll get yours, I'll see to it personally!

Lydia sniffled loudly, and wiped her eyes. Beetlejuice handed her a tissue, surprisingly non-grimy.

"I thought you hated me. I thought you blamed me for getting eaten by a sandworm," Lydia said, twisting the tissue in her hands until it came to pieces.

"I already told you I didn't, Lyds. I wasn't lying."

Lydia felt a general uneasiness settle over her. This wasn't the monster she had begun to think he was twenty-three long years ago. This was a man, grimy and dirty, yes, but still a man. A thought that was somehow even more frightening than portraying him as a heartless fiend.

Beetlejuice leaned forward abruptly, and touched her hair again. When Lydia didn't respond, he sighed, and left the room.

-- 


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7 

Sara slowly and carefully drew a thick black stripe on her eyelid. She paused to examine her handiwork, and smiled.

She rummaged through her jewelry, and picked out a long chain, which she attached to her belly-button ring. She made a face. Fantasy would have a stroke if she saw that. She pulled her shirt down a little further.

Fantasy, who's first malevolent act towards her daughter was naming her Serafina! She had gotten the name out of some shitty book (The Golden Compass) she had read once. Then Fantasy had the gall to try and make HER read it!

Sara had demanded since she was old enough to talk to be called Sara. Her mother had fought her bitterly on that point, exclaiming in a never-ending mantra that it was, 'just too cute!' but that was a battle Sara intended to win. Finally, after five whole years, Fantasy quit, and mostly just called her 'you there.'

Sara slung out of her room, wearing hot pink and black biker shorts, neon green socks, black tennis shoes, a short, ruffly black skirt, a t-shirt striped every possible color, a stop-sign red hoodie, and a huge, yellow smiley face pendant.

Sara smiled. She was a wild girl! Maybe Dean would ask her to be part of his band! She could play the keyboard for them. Maybe those piano lessons Eddie had forced on her hadn't been wasted after all. Too bad he had never once stopped talking about his dead mother the whole time, and how great she was at the piano, and how Sara should strive to be like her, yadda yadda yadda.

Sara snorted. She had seen photos of her grandmother, and she wasn't all that great. Short, gloomy looking woman. No wildness there. Sara was glad she would never have to meet her. Just some scary looking goth, even as an adult.

Sara slid a tube of chunky red lipstick around her lips, and smirked vainly at her reflection in the hallway mirror

--

Eddie adjusted his collar, and looked around at the grand house. He was fond of this place, it had been in the family for three generations, and he hoped Sara would live here as an adult too.

His grandmother, Delia, had sold the house to Lydia and moved down to Florida with her sickly husband, Charles. Unfortunately, he had died soon after. Something to do with heart trouble. However, if the letters were to be believed (and he wasn't sure he did, they didn't seem possible) Grandma Deetz was still alive and kicking like the Rockettes.

Eddie awoke from his reverie as Sara rushed past him. He grabbed her shoulder and spluttered out, "Young lady, what in the name of god are you wearing?!"

"Clothes?" Sara suggested. "Look Ed, I'm gonna be late for school." And with that parting shot, she bounded away, her skirt flapping up alarmingly high.

Ed stood immobile, absolutely mortified. Ed? Since when was he just Ed? Whatever had happened to Dad, or Pops, or even a good old formal, Father? God, maybe she didn't consider him to be her father anymore! Was this her way of trying to tell him he'd been a bad parent?

He heard a sharp snap in the air, and dully looked to see what else had gone wrong. He had accidentally snapped off one of the handles to his briefcase.

He remembered all the small acts of defiance that his daughter had indulged in through the years, which had been growing in intensity over the last couple months.

There was no doubt about. He was losing his daughter.

--

Fantasy slowly and deliberately wiped the expensive china dish clean. She stared at her reflection, distorted by the water and bubbles sliding down its smooth surface.

When the dish was dry, and shiny enough to use as a mirror, she slowly pivoted, holding the dish between two fingers, and watched expressionlessly as it slid from her fingers and crashed onto the floor. She carefully picked up another plate, and began wiping it.

Fantasy was throwing a temper tantrum. Her husband had not said good-bye to her, hadn't said I love you, didn't kiss her, didn't hug her. Just stomped in like an ape from a zoo, ate his breakfast, grunted at her, and stomped out. Then that monster people would have her believe was her daughter came in and had the gall to call her Fantasy. Not Mom, or Mother, or even Ma'am. Just Fantasy, as though they were equals.

Fantasy dropped another plate, and ground her heel into it, pretending it was Serafina's face. The ungrateful brat didn't even appreciate the beautiful name she had given her.

Fantasy picked up her husband's coffee cup, narrowing her eyes at the permanent stains inside. She picked up a butcher's knife, muttering, "It was time for you to go anyways." She neatly cut the heavy plastic cup in half with a strength no one would have believed of her. She did this to every cup in the sink.

She picked up a champagne glass. It was truly a beautiful piece of glass, delicately fluted, and shaped like a rose.

She smashed it on the edge of the sink, and went into the living room, proceeding to tear up the leather couch with the broken glass.

There was a family portrait over there. SMASH! Not anymore. The grandfather clock. She had wanted it to be by the kitchen, but Eddie had insisted it be by the piano. She dragged it over where she had wanted it, never mind the marks it left on the floor. And speaking of the piano, they never played it anyways. Who needed it? Not her! She ripped out the strings.

Smash anything that'll break, kill the rage before people come over that she could hurt. No use in getting arrested.

She never liked that broom, it had bad bristles and didn't pick up the dirt. Out the window you go! Oops, the window wasn't open. Oh well, it is now. There's that dumb cat that isn't allowed to go outside. Would you like to meet the great outdoors, Mr. Whiskers? Of course you would. Out the window too, be sure to avoid the glass. Even she isn't that cruel.

There's the plastic doodad Sara had made when she was four, and given to Eddie. Sara hadn't made Fantasy anything. She tossed it in the trash compactor.

Ah ha, jackpot. Sara's diaries. Burn them; or read them, and use them for wallpaper?

Wallpaper, of course.

She got a pot of glue out, and painstakingly ripped out every sheet, and glued them to the dining room walls. She let loose a very unladylike curse. She had stepped on a piece of glass.

Ignoring it, she continued her fevered rampage on the house. Medical supplies were thrown down to the basement. Portraits of family members were taken off of the walls and stomped on.

She came across a portrait of her mother-in-law.

It's just a portrait. Stomp on it, too. Oh god, it's glaring at me! Like she knew when she had the picture taken! Burning, accusing eyes. I always knew she would've hated me. Everybody does.

Get a fork, gouge the eyes out. Make her stop staring! Stab them, that'll show . . . must stop talking to self. It's just a portrait. It can't hurt you. Stab the eyes out anyways; it's like a trick portrait, with the eyes and the staring. I hate it! I hate her; he never stops talking about her! Stupid, stupid . . . He'll never forgive me for ruining a picture of his mother. What do I do?

I've just ruined the whole house . . . why? There was no real reason. If you were a better woman, you'd just eat a gallon of ice cream, like everyone else does.

Fantasy uncurled from her fetal position on the floor, and began to go upstairs, to look at the checkbook. Her temper tantrums had always been messy, as well as expensive.

-- 


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8 

Lydia carefully floated just above the floor, the lovely hardwood surface completely hidden underneath furniture and broken glass. Eddie hadn't set one foot in the house when he came home, instead coldly informing Fantasy that he was going to sleep in a hotel tonight, and she had better start cleaning up.

Her gaze was drawn to a shattered mirror. The remaining glass had the words _'7 years bad luck'_ drawn in through the dust. She grimaced.

Beetlejuice phased through the ceiling, drifting down to stop directly in front of Lydia.

"She can sure make a mess, can't she?" he observed.

Lydia sulked. "Stupid cheerleading fluffhead," she said darkly. "Making a mess outta my house!"

"Want me to get her?!" he cried, with far too much enthusiasm.

Lydia glared. "No, imbecile. I do not. I do not want anybody being killed in my house!"

"Aw, I wouldn't kill her! I'd just give her a few more gray hairs!" he snickered.

Before she could stop herself, Lydia's hand flew up to her own hair, sporting a silver streak in it. Self-conscious, she tucked the shoulder length mass behind her ear.

By some miracle, Beetlejuice sensed his blunder. "Aw don't worry about it babe. That ain't gray, that's silver. And it looks gorgeous on you." Lydia sniffed and tossed her head, but inwardly she glowed. She hadn't been told she was beautiful since before Eddie had been born. Even coming from the dirty poltergeist, it made her feel better about herself.

Just as Beetlejuice was going to reach out and touch her hair, the lovely moment was spoiled by the shrill scream that echoed through the entire house. Sara dropped her backpack on the floor and said dramatically, "What. In HELL! Happened. Here!!"

Fantasy poked her head out at her daughter, rolled her eyes, and retreated. Sara stormed into the living room, despite the crunching noises heard under her shoes. And then released another outraged scream.

"MY DIARIES!" she howled. As well she might, for every exploit she had ever committed was now pasted on the walls for all to read.

Lydia made an outraged noise at this flamboyant disturbance of her peace, and drifted through the ceiling, coming up through the floor of the attic, where the sounds of the brewing fight were at least muffled.

Beetlejuice followed suit, arms clasped behind his back, and an innocent look on his face. The first thing that caught his attention was the model of the town. He made an outraged noise in the back of his throat, and swept it onto the floor before Lydia noticed.

Lydia had her back to him . . . and a very nice back it was. He scrambled through his pockets till he found a camera, and snapped a shot.

Lydia whirled around, indignant. She began yelling about something, but his hyperactive brain immediately tuned her out. He rocked back and forth a little, noticing that his knee popped every time he went forward. He tested it, and was rewarded with what sounded like a chorus of snapping fingers.

"Are you even listening to me?" she cried, running out of breath.

"'Course I am!" he said. He smiled at her, obviously thinking that his green and brown teeth held some sort of charm.

They did not.

Lydia shuddered, and wanted to brush her own teeth.

Beetlejuice started digging in his pockets once she had resumed lecturing. His fingers closed around something soft and furry, with a long chain. He beamed. Perfect.

"You're NOT listening to me!" Lydia cried. Before she could say anything else, Beetlejuice whipped out the object he had in his pocket, and dangled it in front of her face.

It was a bat necklace, something Lydia had plenty of, but this one was special. The body was made of soft black rabbit fur, with a little button nose. It had large black leather ears, and wide leather wings, long enough to touch both of her shoulders.

Lydia sighed. It was the most adorable thing she had ever seen. She couldn't resist.

"It's so cute," she crooned.

Beetlejuice did an ecstatic back flip. She liked it! But of course she did. It was a present from him, the Ghost with the Most!

Lydia spared him a wary glance, as she clutched the necklace in her hands. "You can't keep bribing me into a good mood forever," she pointed out.

"Yes I can!" Beetlejuice announced smugly, not bothering to deny the charges of bribery.

Lydia floated downstairs, to find it eerily empty of her family. She shrugged and headed for the living room to look out the window.

As she passed by the TV, the annoying thing flicked on. For some reason, TVs and computer screens all went haywire when she went near them.

Beetlejuice immediately squealed with joy, plopping down on the couch, and putting up his muddy boots. Somehow, the spectral mud got onto the coffee table.

"What do you think –" Lydia started, only to be shushed noisily.

"Quiet! They're about to be married!" he said desperately. He shivered in his seat with anticipation. Lydia leaned over to see what he was watching.

A busty woman, nearly falling out of her wedding dress, was standing at the altar next to a tall man with black hair, who was fidgeting nervously. Lydia noted he had an eye patch.

When his identical triplet came striding down the aisle, denouncing the marriage as fraud, however, Lydia lost interest. Beetlejuice however, was making short work of his nails in anticipation. Lydia sighed and got up, accidentally turning it off as she did so.

She raced out of the living room, followed by B's cry of rage.

--

The Next Day

Lydia locked herself in what used to be her room, tears of rage streaming down her face. It was a useless gesture, but perhaps it made the point. She couldn't get rid of the bastard! She still couldn't remember his name. God, his name, what's his name?! She flung herself down onto the floor.

They had had a huge, knockdown, drag out fight, and there was no doubt in Lydia's mind but that he had won. For some stupid reason, Lydia had gone and forgotten how dangerous the B-man was, but it had all come rushing back when she saw him push her son, _my son, my only son, he could've died_, off the stairs.

_I could feel fangs growing out from my teeth, and I just know my eyes turned red. How DARE he do that to my son! Look at him, he's laughing so hard he can barely stand up! I'll rip his trachea out, see him laugh after that!!_

She had launched herself at him, feeling her rage possess her. The split second look of shock plastered on his face was rewarding, but it didn't last long. Before she knew what had happened, she was spinning out near the ceiling, dizzy and sick.

_He yelled at me, asked me what in hell I thought I was doing. I ignored him, and looked for my son. He was getting up, he's okay. He's bewildered and angry, but he's okay. I could concentrate on killing B._

How could she have forgotten how dangerous he was? As if his disturbing mood swings hadn't been enough, he had just attacked her son, who was defenseless against him.

She remembered another time, he had done very nearly the same thing to her father.

"It's settled," she whispered to herself. "He just HAS to go!"

--

Beetlejuice stormed around the house in a rage. Things had been going so well, and then they just went so horribly wrong. The look she had had on her face had been positively frightening.

He scowled. It wasn't like the man had been hurt all that bad anyways. Just a long fall, maybe some bruises. Oh, all right, he definitely had bruises, but since when do bruises kill anyone? He'd just been having a little fun! That's what breathers were FOR, for christ's sake.

He went up to Fantasy's room, and for lack of anything better to do, went through Fantasy's underwear drawer. He wasn't disappointed; Fantasy had a lot of underwear, that wasn't a lot of underwear. If you know what I mean.

He finished fingering through the underwear, and dropped his own personal calling card in the drawer. In other words, a garden snake.

He shifted restlessly. He was having the same problem here that he had back in his grave, he had nowhere to go.

He nicked a quarter and flicked it into his pocket. His feet started to walk without him in the driver's seat. That was a problem of his, he just couldn't sit still to save his afterlife. He thought he might have been ADHD when he was still alive.

He sat down and thought for a moment, which was hard. He couldn't keep his thoughts in line.

She looked pretty angry. I don't know why, it was just her kid. Hey, I wonder if I had any kids? I can't remember . . . They'd be dead by now anyways. So, she's angry. What do you do with a chick that's angry again? God, I don't know. I always dumped them before when they got pissy. But I don't want to dump Lydia yet. Yet, I haven't even started! She doesn't like me yet. What do I have to do, give blood? No, I don't have blood anymore. Nix that. Wait, what was I talking about again? Ah, Lydia and her anger issues. Maybe a therapist?

Wait, what's that one thing those breathers do? Appy—appoll? Apply? Appologest? Apologize! That's it! I'll – hell no! I ain't apologizing for anything! Apologising would make it seem as though I was actually sorry, or that I wouldn't do it again!

Blech! No way. Uh-uh! Not me!

--

"Lyds?"

"…"

"Lyds, I'm . . .I'm . . . I'm sor – I'm SORRY!" 


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9 

Her reaction, although not exactly what he had been hoping for, was hilarious. She collapsed out of the air and landed on her bum, staring at him open-mouthed.

Despite the fact that he had really wanted the moment to seem serious so the apology would be more believable, it was just too funny to pass up a cackle for. So he rolled back into the air, kicking his boots in the air and giggling.

"All right!" Lydia growled, her ghostly energies starting to swirl. "Who are you, and what are you doing in my house?"

Beetlejuice jolted upright, startled. His predictions for how she would react were seeming more remote by the minute. Of course, he had imagined something along the line of her swooning, him catching her in his arms, and then having his wicked way with her . . . Nope. Wasn't happening, at least at this point.

"What do you mean who am I? It's me, your lovable poltergeist!" he spluttered.

"Ha! I know him better than that! He would NEVER apologize, not even to save his own afterlife!" Lydia revealed smugly. Beetlejuice spluttered indignantly.

"Here I am, practically on my knees begging for your forgiveness, only to have you mercilessly spurn me as a fraud!" he declaimed dramatically. To be honest, he had no idea where the words had come from, or what over half of them meant.

At the sight of his traditional ridiculous behaviour, Lydia's stance wavered. "But . . . it's impossible! You've never apologized before!"

Beetlejuice sensed he was close to a victory, and chose his words with care accordingly.

"There's always gotta be a first time," he said, shrugging his shoulders and looking at her intently.

Lydia was flabbergasted. It acted and sounded (and smelled) like the poltergeist she knew so well, even the stuttered apology showed a reluctance that he would be certain to have.

Besides, the real Beetlejuice would probably have killed an imposter by now. Unless the imposter was strong enough to overpower him. In which case, said imposter would probably have more important things to be doing than apologizing to her.

And so, trapped by her own traitorous thoughts, Lydia was forced to come to one conclusion. The monster was capable of feeling remorse after all. And technically, if he could feel remorse, then he wasn't a monster at all . . . No, no, she wasn't quite ready to face that train of thought yet.

"I . . . accept your apology," Lydia forced out.

Whooping with glee, Beetlejuice spun around the room. Lydia stared in disbelief. B had only been around for three days, and she had the feeling that once again, nothing would ever go back to normal.

--

Beetlejuice spent the rest of the day glued to the screen of the television, watching breathlessly as Christine fell into the arms of her illicit lover, the gardener Eduardo, while her husband made a deal with some gangsters.

By the time he finally managed to peel himself away, it was nearly dusk. He wandered about the house, looking for someone to spook. As it turned out, Fantasy was on hand, still not quite finished clearing out the house of everything she had broken.

Sneakily, Beetlejuice animated the broom and forced Fantasy to chase it all over the house as he flicked pennies at her head, and laughed audibly. After a mere fifteen minutes, Fantasy had bolted out the door screaming and pulling out her own hair, followed by a shower of change.

Beetlejuice lazily drifted through the floor into the basement. What he saw surprised him. Lydia was standing in front of a large pile of Delia's art, going over it contemplatively. What really caught his interest, however, was a life-sized bust of the Beetlesnake, poised menacingly over her head.

He had a thought, which at the moment seemed like genius. Silently, he drifted over, and slid inside the sculpture, stretching and shifting until he filled every contour.

"Hiya babe!" he said.

"WAAAGHH!" she screeched, leaping back. Recognizing his blunder, Beetlejuice slid out of the sculpture, and immediately tried to cover over the situation the usual way -- by talking fast enough that the other couldn't get a word in edgewise, and hopefully forgot what they were talking about in favor for what he was talking about.

"Hey, looks like Delia had better taste than I thought! Seems like she can appreciate true beauty when she sees it, I guess its a good thing I came around, 'cuz all her other stuff looked like shit. Did she do any other stuff based on me, or is this one just special?"

"It's special all right," Lydia muttered, having regained her composure.

Beetlejuice beamed, having completely missed the sarcasm. He swung around and started pacing the room heavily, fiddling with his hands, his eyes roving. Snapping his fingers, he plopped down onto the floor, and started going through his pockets. He had made it his personal mission to give Lydia a gift each day. Hopefully, she would warm up to him.

Lydia drew back, feeling vaguely horrified at the sheer number of bugs and rats concealed upon his person.

She watched him pull out of his pocket, of all things, a baby grand piano. As he did so, something dropped away from the keys, and rolled towards her. A little glass ball, which slowed, and then finally stopped, right at her feet. She picked it up, curious, and examined it.

A miniature explosion was trapped inside, fiery waves racing to the edges of its glassy confines, only to dissipate and withdraw into itself, into a vaguely spherical shape, compacting further and further, until all that was left was a small fiery ball, a fierce shade of deep red. Without warning, it exploded, and the whole process repeated itself.

"The birth of a star," Beetlejuice informed her, having come up behind her shoulder without her noticing. She did not notice his vague uneasiness.

"Which star?" she murmured, captivated.

"I dunno. Just some star," he said with forced cheerfulness, which she also did not notice. He hesitated, and then, against his better judgement (when had he ever listened to his better judgement anyways?) he told her, "You can have it if you want."

Lydia, who had been clutching the trinket tightly, loath to let it go, looked up at him suddenly, gratitude shining in her eyes. She made a sudden, quickly-aborted motion towards him, almost as though she had been going to hug him, and stepped back, thanking him sincerely.  
Seeing Lydia happy made him very happy, and swept away the last traces of wariness.

Lydia floated through the ceiling, so she could put the trinket with her other belongings, in a tucked-away corner in the attic. Naturally, the other two gifts B had given her were there as well. The poltergeist obviously just knew the kinds of things she liked.

Sighing, Lydia picked up the fallen model of the town, and placed it back on the table, fixing the broken pieces with a twiddle of her fingers. Beetlejuice, who had followed her up, sqauwked indignantly. She ignored him.

Sulking, he started drawing pictures with his finger in the grime on the window. A large, stick figure Beetlejuice, with large bumps on his flexing arms, towering over the puny, cowering mortals. He added a tiny sandworm under his feet, for good measure.

Lydia was in a good mood, and feeling a bit mischievous. So she added her own finger to the fray, drawing herself even larger than the vain ghost, with her hands on her hips and a foot poised to squash.

Huffing indignantly, Beetlejuice drew a large machine gun in his picture's arms. Lydia, however, simply gave her drawing what she explained was an "impervious shield," (Imperva-what?!)

"Oh, this is war!" Beetlejuice exclaimed. He frantically drew a spark on Mini-B's finger, which he claimed turned her 'impervable' shield into a handful of snakes, which Lydia stepped on in much the same way that Beetlejuice was stepping on the sandworm.

"We've run out of window," Lydia remarked, making a mental note to herself to check the rest of the windows in the house to make sure they were not in the same condition.

Beetlejuice drew a tiny raining cloud over her head just to prove her wrong, but then had to admit, there was no more drawing room. Just then, Fantasy's shrill voice echoed faintly from downstairs.

"Dinner-time," Lydia said to herself, floating downstairs. It was her habit to preside over meals, as she was still the family matriarch, dead as she happened to be, and this was the first dinner they had had as a family for nearly a week.

Naturally, it was tense affair, Sara glaring at Fantasy, Fantasy glaring at Eddie, and Eddie glaring off into space, and Beetlejuice of course felt obliged to aggravate them, although discreetly for once.

Icing up all the food so it seemed like it was uncooked, which got everybody mad at Fantasy, whispering Eddie's name into his ear so that he thought the girls were calling his name and then playing innocent, which got him mad at everyone, and sharply yanking Sara's hair so that she cried out, which caused Fantasy to denounce her as an attention-seeking trouble-maker.

Ah well. Supper was doomed to be a failure anyways.

-- 


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10 

He could feel it. The light tugging on his spine that was always present when some poor sap said his name. Except he could tell this was no ordinary sap. That extra feeling, of dread and cigarette smoke. He was in for a chewing out from Juno again.

She was taking her sweet time though. The feeling of dread increased. Something was wrong.

He slid through the floor. He could only think of one course of action, no matter how stupid it seemed. Although . . . _Stupid's never stopped me before,_ he thought dismissively.

Lydia was drifting about the living room looking mournful. Normally he would have made a joke about the dead being in the living room, but he was running out of time. With a snap of his fingers, he restored his name in her mind.

She whirled around, her mouth open accusingly. "Bee--!" however, was all she was able to get out before he waved his arms at her entreatingly. Something in his manner was so different -- was that fear in his eyes?-- that she obeyed the silent entreaty and closed her mouth.

"Juno's calling me in, babe. Normally I wouldn't risk my get-out-of-jail-free card like this, but something's different this time." He offered her a crooked smile. "I don't like the idea of burning all my bridges I guess."

"Why do you think this one's so different?" Lydia asked cautiously.

"I--" was all he managed before he disappeared in a pillar of furious looking flame with a pained yelp.

--

After he had tumbled aimlessly in the abyss between the living and after-world for what felt like ages, Beetlejuice landed on a chair directly in front of Juno herself. He frantically beat at his sleeves, trying to put them out.

Juno was mad. Her cigarette smoke, normally escaping only from her throat and mouth, seemed to be pumping out of every cavity in her head, especially her ears.

"Beetlejuice, you are in so much trouble," she told him clearly and slowly, punctuating each word with a jab at his charred vest.

He paused in his attempts to save his favorite suit, the wary feeling evolving into dread. Juno had never used his full name before. Never. The stigma, the fear attached to it had always been too much for her. For her to say it now, and to seem so absolutely comfortable in doing so . . .

"This isn't like the hooey with your name," she said, her voice still remarkably calm. "It isn't like being confined to your grave. This is BIG STUFF," two more pokes at his chest, which spurred his attempts to extinguish himself again. "You've revealed the existence of the afterlife to YET ANOTHER breather. You broke nearly all the rules with your stunt with the ouija board. You've performed illegal mirror travel, which, by the way, how in holy hell did you get that thing? and you've become an obsessed stalker in regards to one Lydia Carmichael."

"Carmichael?" Beetlejuice sputtered.

"Pay attention!" Juno roared, her composure shattering. "I can't help you this time!!"

The office fell silent except for her heavy breathing. Beetlejuice forgot about his flaming pants yet again.

"You can't help me this time?" he asked blankly. Denial was settling around him like a large blanket, stifling his inner, panicked voice. _Why would she need to help me? What's going on?_

"No. I have no say in it this time. They're pulling me out because of personal bias. Everything you've ever done- they're dredging it **ALL** back up and lumping it along with this new case. B-, they're going for an exorcism."

He wrapped his denial blanket around himself even more tightly, but he could not stop the strain of panicked thoughts. The entire council combined, all together could quite conceivably contain enough power to get rid of him permanently. It wouldn't happen though. He wouldn't let it. The leash around his neck that was his name was not so tight, he was not so powerless that he couldn't prevent _this_.

Juno was still talking. "--Don't think they'll get it though."

Beetlejuice collapsed bonelessly in his seat, relief pooling in every muscle. He giggled girlishly. No worries! If it was unlikely, then he could worm his way around it so that it was impossible! He'd faced greater odds!

Juno looked at him wearily. "Don't start celebrating yet, B." The sight of her nemesis' naked fear had jolted her, washed all the resentment away. She was not glad of the news she had to tell him. Any of it. She thought she could relish it, her archenemy getting his at last, but she enjoyed their pseudo-war too much to claim she was glad it was over. "I saw some of the alternative punishments they had laid out."

"So?" he asked, still giggling. Stupid man. "More restrictions? I can handle it!"

"They are the kind of punishments designed to make you wish you had been exorcised instead." she clarified. She practically swallowed her cigarette, her need for the nicotine was so great.

He still looked clueless.

"Everlasting torment," she elaborated further.

Beetlejuice looked long and hard at Juno, looking for any sign of exaggeration. Maybe an outright lie? Maybe she was getting revenge for all the grief he had given her, and his punishment wouldn't be that bad? No. Her face was stone-cold serious.

That unnerving sensation came back, dripping down his spine, clenching his stomach, and lifting his hair on end. A dull numbness spread through his limbs, making them feel as heavy as lead, stunning his brain so he couldn't even begin to come up with a snappy comeback, or a plan.

Fear. For the first time in his entire afterlife, not counting earlier in this office, he was afraid. Not nervous, or anxious. Bone aching, brain paralyzing fear.

Surprisingly, Juno was making an attempt at what could be mistaken as trying to reassure him.

"It-it's not certain. They're still deliberating." she offered. He looked up slowly, unencouraged. The fear was hardening on his face into something more recognizable, something that looked more like it belonged there. Anger.

"What about Lydia?" he asked coldly, his hands in his pockets, boots back up on her desk.

Juno glared pointedly, but seeing what little difference it made, she said reluctantly, "At the very least, you will never be allowed to see her again. He bolted out of his chair. "Why?!" he hissed, his eyes flickering from glowing green to deep red.

"She is none of your concern anymore," she said stonily.

"Juney!" he yelled, the red bleeding away in his frustration.

"You'll be taken to a holding cell while your punishment is decided. You shall not have access to your powers, you shall not be allowed to leave." Before Beetlejuice could protest, she leaned forward and stamped his outstretched hand, flicking away an errant beetle. He retreated, glaring at the ink seeping into his skin. 1010011010

"What the hell is this?" he spat.

"It's a cell block number. I say your name three times, this is the only place you're going to go."

"Don't."

"Beetlejuice."

"Juney! You said it once earlier already. Think! You don't have to do this!"

"Beetlejuice!" she cried as he reached for her.

And then he was gone.

Juno sat for a moment, shaken.

"You have no idea the things I have to do, B. You have no idea at all," she muttered, lighting another cigarette.

Far, far away from everything anybody ever cared about, a maniac stormed the walls of his cells, shrieking and howling, feeling the loss of his powers like acid ground into his veins.

But there was nobody to hear his cries and threats except for other maniacs, for his prison didn't need any guards.

-- 


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11 

Lydia stood stock still in the basement, where the recently renamed miscreant Beetlejuice had just disappeared. She bent over and examined the scorch mark burnt into the carpet from his dramatic exit.

_Did that really just happen?_ she wondered. But the proof was there in the form of a black mark on HER floor, that refused to be moved, no matter how she blasted it with her phantasmic powers. Finally, she gave it up as a bad job.

Was that really fear she had seen glimmering in his eyes? No, it was something else, something similar. Like worry. Either way, the expression was so alien to him as to be almost unrecognizable when on him.

But why? Why was he concerned, or worried, or afraid, or whatever the emotion? What did he have to fear? Hadn't he been getting away with ridiculous stunts for his entire afterlife? Why should this one time be any different?

And what was with that fire? She had never seen such a thing before, and if that yell he gave was any indication, it was the person on the other end who was to blame. Whoever it was, Juno she guessed, must have been furious with him. Could it be that there was a major rule he had broken that she didn't know about?

And why in the world was she worrying about him?!

She wandered around restlessly, finding it impossible to return to the lethargy that had characterized her afterlife before his arrival. It was past midnight, and her family was all safely tucked in their beds, so she could find no entertainment in watching them. Barbara and Adam still had not returned from Juno's office, and Lydia could only sympathise with their bad luck at drawing a number.

She was impossibly bored. Sooooo bored.

Dimly, she remembered the days just after Beetlejuice had been banished the first time. There had been much levitation, and shaking of body parts. She was no longer a young girl, but as a ghost, arthritis, stiff joints, and tender backs were not an issue anymore.

Hesitantly, she sent her family members into a deep sleep so they would not wake up no matter how much noise she made, and then zapped the radio to life with a lively reggae tune.

At first she felt foolish. She was a grown woman, she should not be dancing in the air and shaking it "all the time." She kept expecting someone, probably Beetlejuice, to leap around the corner and shout, "A-ha! I knew you were undignified at heart!"

Yeah, like Beetlejuice would ever use a word like undignified.

Soon, however, she was caught up in the beat, and forgot to worry about her dignity, as she zapped a few chairs into forming a conga line and hopping around the living room, as the dining room table and living room table danced a waltz. Even the curtains were shaking in time with the beat.

Almost at dawn, Lydia finally collapsed, laughing hard. The dining room table escorted the living room table back into its assigned room, and then trundled off, followed by its chairs, as all the silverware floated back into their drawers and cabinets.

On cue, Sara wandered downstairs, yawning and scratching, just missing the sight of the last fork darting into the closing drawer.

Lydia drifted up the stairs, slightly spooked at her close call, and decided to spend some time in the attic. The model was sitting on the table just where she left it. She gazed at it, half expecting to see Beetlejuice's grave.

She let out a little laugh, seeing that their drawings on the dusty window were still there. To her absolute shock, the stick figure flexed it's arms twice. Her gaze snapped over to her drawing. It was shaking its head, apparently despairing of Beetlejuice.

"We must have put more into that than I realized," Lydia muttered, backing away slowly. The drawings continued their silent battle, unmindful of her presence.

She wandered over to her special corner, and picked up her engagement ring, the last memento of her husband she had been able to carry away with her after death. He had died when Eddie was three, leaving her a widow in a large house with an even larger mortgage, with no way to pay most of her bills. Her job was supplementary, not enough to support the household. Charles and Delia had sold her this house immediately, and for much, much less than it was worth, in favor of moving down to Florida.

She waited several months to move out though, hoping to see her husband's ghost so she could at least say good-bye and wish him luck in his huge house. But he never showed up, even after nearly a year.

She bullied her way into the waiting room, demanded to see Juno, and got in after a mere two weeks. Her son, little innocent child that he was, had no idea what was taking so long, and why they had to sit in this creepy and horrible room. That was also when she realized he did not possess her gift of seeing ghosts, after hearing his repeated claims that the waiting room was empty.

Juno had been no help at all. Apparently there were no records of her husband dying, in fact there were no records of him having existed at all. So, confused and heartsick, she returned to the world of the living, packed up everything she could bear to bring, and moved back to her old home with Barbara and Adam, who were thrilled to have a child in the house, especially her sweet little boy with his big chocolate brown eyes, even if he never knew they were there.

She had taken a job at the Winter River Theater, painting backdrops and props, and made enough to get by, managing to work and beat off all the men acting like bulls in heat at the same time.

It lasted for fifteen years, until she was shot.

Snapping out of her thoughts, Lydia noticed that the attic was beginning to ice over in accordance with her depressing thoughts. Shaking her head, she made the effort to move on to less depressing thoughts. Remembering last night brought an involuntary smile to her lips. It had been a long time since she had felt that carefree.

In that same pile with her ring was the fluffy bat necklace that Beetlejuice had given her. She was still hard-pressed to believe that such an adorable little thing had sprung from his pocket. Giving in to a sudden impulse, she detached the chain and with a wave of her hand gave the little bat temporary life.

It chirped brightly, wings still outspread, and gazed around at its new world, enraptured. With another chirp, it flung itself into the air, flapping stiffly, and fluttered away downstairs.

Laughing, Lydia pursued it, stopping short at the sight of Fantasy, shivering badly, with the heater up full blast and wrapped in sweaters and blankets.

"It's only the middle of August, it shouldn't be this cold!," she muttered, huddled on the couch. Now Lydia felt bad.

But not bad enough to do anything about it.

Lydia wandered into the kitchen, looking for her little friend the bat when it happened. One minute she was bobbing along calling softly for her runaway necklace, the next she dropped to the ground, her head feeling like it was ruthlessly being ripped open and rifled through the same way a pursesnatcher might go through a wallet.

The it was over. She lay on the ground, panting painfully. Something had been robbed out of her mind, she knew it, and she could feel it. Naturally, her thoughts turned to the first time she had been forced to forget something by . . .

Oh. Shit. He was right. It WAS different this time. The higher-ups had just robbed her of his name. She couldn't even remember that replacement nick-name she had given him.

She had to find a way to help him.

_But why?_ a small voice deep inside asked her.

". . ."

"Well, those arguments aside," Lydia muttered. But no, she knew why she had to help him. She had changed him. The apology, the presents, the little games they had played. It all added up to one thing; the poltergeist was NOT the monster she had thought he was.

Plus, the people who were holding him had just invaded her mind, and painfully ripped something out of it. She was _not_ pleased with them.

For the first time, she noticed what her little fit had done to the house. A sudden upsurge of her powers had blown everything around her three feet back, and left a huge patch of ice just underneath her. The entire house's temperature was dropping to somewhere around thirty degrees.

Fantasy had bolted out of the house, unable to withstand this last straw, as the couch she was sitting on launched itself backwards. Currently, she was stumbling down the road, still wrapped in her heavy sweater and blanket in the hot August sun.

One of the neighbors came across her. "Ma'am, are you all right?" he asked, looking distressed on her behalf. She looked up at him, her eyes glazed.

"My house is possessed by the devil," she told him.

After a moment, the neighbor replied, "Okay," and went on his way, deciding it would probably be best to just leave her alone.

Back inside the house, Lydia was stomping up the stairs just because she still could, and just to demonstrate how enraged she was. She finally made it up to the attic, and went through the well-worn ritual, drawing a door on the wall with the chalk, and stepping through.

Not surprisingly, Barbara and Adam were sitting out in the waiting room. Adam looked to be asleep, a long string of drool hanging from the corner of his mouth. Barbara was propped up against his shoulder, snoring softly. Lydia smiled, temporarily forgetting her ire. However, she recalled it soon enough as she heard a loud, "A-hem!" behind her. She turned around, to see an impatient looking Miss Argentina cocking an eyebrow at her.

"Take a number please, someone will see you as soon as possible," she droned, flicking a long, well-manicured finger at the slip of paper.

"113," she read. She glanced at the display. "16,543,699. Not even close. Wonderful."

She sat down next to Adam glumly, already bored. On her other side, a young woman holding her head in her lap smiled at her. Not sure what else she could do, Lydia smiled back.

Just then, Barbara yawned into wakefulness. "Oh! Hello Lydia. What are you doing here? I thought you'd been left at home."

"I was," Lydia said. "I came here myself, to complain about an invasion to my privacy. Apalling."

"Ah," Barbara said knowingly. No doubt she thought Lydia was referring to Beetlejuice. Changing the subject quickly to the Carmichael family Lydia had left behind, the two women chattered to themselves until Adam woke up, and started adding his own insights. 

Two Weeks later . . .

Lydia lay sprawled out on her chair, arms dangling limply by her side, head tilted back, eyes glaring senselessly at the wall. She looked as dead as she was.

It had been hard learning how to sleep with both eyes open and her number at the forefront of her mind, but she had gotten the trick of it, and slept on, blissfully unaware of how creepy she looked to the others in the waiting room.

Naturally, Adam and Barbara had gotten through almost a week ago, and had departed with expressions a mix of relief and regret. The following week had been hellish.

Just then, her number clicked on, and she slid out of her stupor with practiced ease and walked out before Miss Argentina even had time to call her name, to the immense relief of everybody else.

"Why is it you people always come to me?" Juno asked. "Why not Bob, down the hall? He's a perfectly nice man, I'm sure you'd get along famously. Why do I get all the crazy ones?"

Lydia smiled stiffly and ignored the old woman's half-serious complaints. "Why is it that just two weeks ago I was, for lack of a better term, _mind raped_, with the particular goal of ripping one word from my mind and I'm _sure_, that you know what I'm talking about _much_ better than Mr. Bob-Down-The-Hall possibly could," she spat

Juno's face sagged. "You actually felt it then?" she asked wearily, running her hand through her thin white hair.

"Felt it?! It knocked me right out of the air! No wait, I'll tell you _exactly_ what I felt, I felt my mind being ripped open; I felt little invisible fingers groping around my mind; I felt them latch onto that particular name, and I felt them YANK IT OUT of my head!!"

Juno puffed on her cigarette with single-minded intensity. There was silence for a minute, then she said slowly, "We did not foresee this."

Lydia crossed her arms, leaning back. "I suppose that's as close to an apology as I'm going to get from you," she said sarcastically.

"We did what we had to!" Juno snapped angrily. "He is a very dangerous man. Surely you should have realized this by now. We couldn't risk anybody else setting him loose." At that last statement, Juno gave her a beady-eyed glare.

Ignoring her, Lydia asked sharply, "Speaking of which, what's happened to him? Where is he?"

"He's in a holding cell." she answered reluctantly.

"What?! Why?"

"I cannot discuss that with you now. Come back in thirty years or so, when the details will be made public." Juno said dismissively, shuffling her papers in such a way as seemed to indicate that the conversation was over. Lydia refused to be cowed.

"What did he do? It can't be any worse than anything else he's ever done," she argued.

"I can't discuss that with you. Why do you want to know so badly, anyways?"

"Hmm. I don't really feel like answering that."

"Hmmph. I didn't really feel like giving you any answers to the questions asked, but I told you anyways!"

"Lies! You haven't told me anything!"

"I knew it!" Juno bellowed at her, finally losing her temper. "You've spent a little time with him, and now you've grown attached! Growing attached is _dangerous_, especially with him! Don't you realize the danger you put yourself in, you stupid girl? No, of course not. And so, naturally, we have to come and fish you out of your troubles. And you're not even grateful!!"

"Of course I'm not grateful! We were getting along! We were playing games, he was giving me gifts, he actually even apologized to me! Yes, you heard right, he apologized to me -- don't shake your head at me, he did!"

"That doesn't change anything, even if I did believe you, which I don't," Juno said stonily.

"Oh, for god's sake, he's been getting into trouble for nearly three hundred years! What makes this one time so different?"

"I can't discuss that with you," Juno said flatly. "Now if you don't mind, I'm a very busy ghost, and there are others behind you waiting to see me," she said, looking pointedly at the door.

"No no no no, I'm not done here. I--"

"Yes you are!" Juno snapped, stamping a piece of paper and shoving it into her hands. Before Lydia could say another word, she was whisked away, tumbling for a solid minute in a stomach-dumping roll in nothingness before landing on her ass with a loud thump on her living room floor.

"Ooh! That woman! Who in the world does she think she is?" Lydia cried out, in a towering rage. The carpet under and around her started to smoke and curl. The paper in her hands burst into flames.

If Lydia had spared a minute, she might have bothered to ask herself why she was getting so worked up over the lecherous poltergeist's plight.

Then again, maybe not.

-- 


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

(53 years later)

He did not know how long he had been there. It had been long though. (Time just isn't the same here in the grave) Obviously they had decided this was to be his punishment. It was fitting, anyways. He just knew they were relishing the idea of him being trapped in a cell that looked like an empty basement, without his Juice.

He had grown accustomed to the burning agony in his limbs somewhat, at least enough that he could get around, even though he was hunched like an old man. He had not expected that his reaction to his Juice being stripped away would be so severe. Nobody had. But they had found out, and it had delighted them to no end. They had come especially to taunt him, all except Juno, who was there, but couldn't even look him in the eye.

It seemed that in the presence of their aura's, his Juice was accustomed to rejecting it, and shielding himself, all completely subconsciously. His body continued to try and do this, although since his access to his juice was completely blocked off, what happened was something along the lines of immensely painful dry heaving.

He couldn't insult them, he couldn't make rude noises at them, and he couldn't even ignore them, for their presence, and the presence of their energy put him in even more pain, pain that lasted for hours after they left.

Naturally, they were highly amused.

At first, he would storm the walls, shaking his fist and roaring that they couldn't keep him in there forever, he would find a way out, and then they would all pay. But as time wore on (Time worked like that once you were dead. It just seemed to slip away.) his threats came less and less often, as he concentrated more and more on finding a way to block the pain.

He couldn't even remember _Her_ face anymore. Couldn't remember all the little nicknames he had given _Her_. All he remembered, and clung to, was the fact the Juno had blocked _Her_ from calling him back once. Was that the case this time, too? Or had _She_ abandoned him too, and felt good riddance?

But most of the time, he was screaming himself hoarse.

Even before he had been sent here, (Gods, there was a before? Was it a dream?) he had been teetering on the edge of insanity. But whatever bit of sanity he had left he had _earned_, and was proud of it, even as he hated it, wishing to be abandoned to the depths of madness so he wouldn't feel anymore.

He couldn't remember _Her_ name. Neither could he remember his own, it had been so long since it was last called. (Get me out, get me out!) Something to do with a star, and armpits. Was that his name? Armpit? It would be funny if it was. Ha-ha funny. He didn't think that was it, though.

Another shockwave of pain. This one he couldn't deal with. He curled up in a bundle on the floor, glaring senselessly at the wall in front of him as he spasmed.

Footsteps tapped down what was presumably a hall, though he had never seen it. A gopher, an errand-boy from the council. Must have done something right, and then been rewarded by being allowed to take a peek at the once-dangerous bane of society. Like a zoo. It wasn't like this was the first time.

It was his hatred that kept him alive, his attachment to his faceless nameless angel that kept him sane-ish. Right now, hatred was winning. The messenger's aura was fairly weak, although still extremely painful. He forced himself to ride out the shockwaves. He was _nothing_ if he couldn't still scare the piss out of this punk.

Ah, exactly as he had imagined. Wet-behind-the-ears, green as grass, young, recently dead, early twenties, punk. Probably a suicide. Ah, and there it was, a faint vertical slash starting on his wrist, just peeking through the cuff of his sleeve.

Staring at him, all doe-eyed with fear. He pulled himself up, watched the kid skip back in alarm. He slumped slightly, making the effort to look harmless. He gave a low, harsh cough for good measure.

It worked. He hesitated, then returned to his previous spot, something suspiciously akin to pity in his watery brown eyes.

He nearly trembled in his desire to disembowel the little puling puke in front of him. But no. Not yet.

"What's yer name kid?" he rasped out, his voice hoarse from disuse. The wretched pile in front of him twitched, and squeaked in alarm.

"W-Willard Dunn, sir," he dithered. He suppressed a wince. No wonder the kid committed suicide, with a name like that. And what was with the sir? Didn't the council teach their new recruits to treat their prisoners with disrespect?

He beckoned Dullard, as he'd dubbed him, closer. Dithering frantically and wringing his hands, he inched closer.

He leaned forward, despite the protests of his body, and whispered conspiratorially, eyes darting back and forth like he was afraid someone was listening. "You look like a bright kid, Dul--Dunn," he told him, lying through his pointy teeth. Not noticing his almost-slip, Dullard puffed up proudly.

"You want to know my secret?" he whispered. "The secret to how I got so powerful?" Just for a minute, he thought he'd miscalculated, had tried the wrong tack. But no, there it was plain as day, greed shining out of Dullard's eyes. Malevolent glee danced in his mind, but he kept his expression feeble and pained.

Everybody knew about him, knew the stories, and knew the stigma behind his name. _Everybody_ wondered how he had gotten so powerful. In all actuality, it was because some idiot had put a decimal point in the wrong spot in his papers back when those things were done much more sloppily, but nobody else needed to know that. Especially not Dullard.

The kid was nodding frantically, afraid he would retract the offer. He leaned forward further, beckoning him to do the same. Dullard leaned forward, glee on his face at the thought of finally being someone. Closer . . . closer . . . His ear was almost right up against the bars that contained him. It was time.

He launched forward those last few inches, and bit down on Dullard's ear with all the strength in his jaws. Dullard unleashed a panicked, high-pitched scream of pain and started writhing and swatting at the monster, screaming all the while. His ear bled a dark, thick liquid, dripping down both of their faces.

When Dunn's escorts heard the racket, they bolted down to the cells to see what was going on. Their combined aura's proved too much for him, and he passed out and began spasming.

Meanwhile however, his teeth were still locked around Dunn's ear, and it was growing steadily more obvious that either Dunn was going to have to spend the rest of his life attached to a condemned poltergeist, or he was going to have to leave his ear behind, especially as it was now bearing the creature's full weight, who was thrashing and moaning.

No amount of tugging, or short blows at his face could loosen his grip, and finally, tiring of it, one of them pushed to poltergeist's jaws closed even tighter, while the other pulled on poor Willard. The result? An awful ripping sound, and one last squeal of pain.

The two men pulled the blubbering Dunn after them, scolding him roundly for his stupidity and threatening to have him demoted him to janitor.

Back in the cell, he lay on the floor, waiting for the tremors to cease, staring glassily at the ceiling, before rolling over and spitting out the auricle of Dullard's ear. He had gotten almost all of it.

He knew he would pay for his 'fun' later, but Juno had been right after all. He was rather wishing they would just exorcise him already.

He would make sure somebody remembered him, though. Dragging himself over to the walls of his cell, he dug his elongated fingernail into the stone. The first layer of stone fell away under his finger. After nearly five minutes, he finished.

_I wuz here_ was carved into the wall in curly manuscript letters.

He looked at it and decided it wasn't enough.

Which was why when the guards came to get him, he was lying on the ground, shivering in pain, inscribing the last _I wuz here_ on the floor. Every square inch of his cell was covered in those three words.

"Just to let whatever poor bastard who gets locked in here next know he isn't the first," he muttered, as they dragged him away.

The guards were performing an interesting balancing act, holding him by the arms so that his feet never touched the ground, simultaneously trying to hold him as far away from their personal selves as they could, possibly fearing for the safety of their ears.

It was during transport that he began to feel curiously light, something echoing in the back of his mind that seemed very familiar. But before he could ponder upon it, he had been unceremoniously plopped into a chair, and was suddenly facing the entire council.

The man sitting in the middle was obviously the head. At first glance, he could have been mistaken for handsome, but a closer look revealed how sunken and transparent his features were. He was obviously a fairly old ghost, the telltale beginnings of mold beginning just at his hairline. It would probably be a few more centuries before he would be powerful enugh to get rid of that. He himself hadn't bothered for a long time.

"So, even while locked away in the bowels of the earth without your powers and almost completely helpless, you can still manage to cause trouble," the head intoned, his eyes glowing maliciously. "With that last stunt of yours, you finally tipped the scale. It wasn't a big thing in and of itself, but your crimes have added up over the years. We've been keeping track. Activated an obscure clause in our laws. If one ghost breaks the rules x amount of times, they are exorcised without warning and without trial."

He shuffled his papers, looking morbidly pleased. "It has been proven that in no way, in no capacity, and in no place can you ever be considered safe, and you certainly have never been productive. Keeping you around is proving to be a drain on our resources. One from which we are receiving nothing in return.

"Indeed, instead of being grateful for our mercy in not excorcising you immediately, you instead _bite off the ear_ of one of our representatives! Appalling! Simply appalling!"

Looking as bored as one can when being handed a death sentence, he cocked an eyebrow at the council head, who opened his mouth to shout something. But somehow, his words were drowned out by a faint cry, a word that made him bolt upright in a mix of terror and elation, as the council reacted too slowly to prevent the sudden influx of Juice that carried him far away from them.

_"BEETLEJUICE!"_

He was falling, falling fast, and for the first time in years, his body experienced the absence of pain, and it was the most beautiful thing in the entire world.

Then he landed with a bump on a floor that seemed very familiar, with a beautiful face peering at him concernedly. He had just a moment to wonder why she looked so familiar, before his Juice surged through him in an enormous burst that would be felt for miles, and everything seemed to disappear.

* * *

It had been fifty-three years, but the sting of guilt was as fresh as it had been when she had first realized she was helpless to aide him. She missed him, the same way she would miss her foot if it was suddenly cut off. Taken for granted when there, although still needed. And when its gone, you begin to find out just how much you had depended on it.

Apparently, she had depended on him a great deal, because it was fifty-three years later, and she still felt his absence like a physical slap in the face. She had exhausted every outlet she knew to check on, with absolutely no results. She was helpless, trapped in her house, refusing to see Juno, and cut off from anybody that could help her. It was maddening.

Just as bad as his tragedy, was the tragedy of her family. She had been so happy when her son had stayed in her house. When he died, they would be able to keep each other company.

No such luck. Sara had shut up both her parent's in a nursing home as soon as she could, about fifteen year's after her poltergeist's disappearance. Lydia had never seen her son again, and she doubted she ever would. He had died in that home, it would be a miracle if she found him now.

After getting the house to herself, Sara immediately had all of her stoner friends come and live with her, in something resembling a large, twenty-four/seven orgy. She did eventually get into the band that she had wanted to be in so badly. Trying to scare the people out of her house proved impossible, as everything that happened that was out of the ordinary was attributed to the drugs.

After destroying her brain with drugs, she followed her band off onto the streets, traveling by van to catch as many gigs as possible, which wasn't very many, and was growing steadily less and less.

Five years later, five years of living in an empty house, a letter was sent to the house, asking for someone to come and identify a body. Apparently, Sara had overdosed and died in a gutter.

Thus was the end of Lydia Deetz Carmichael's bloodline.

And, to make it all so much worse, just last year, Barbara and Adam's alloted time in the house had run out, and they had had to move on.

The family living in her house now was a pleasant enough family. They never ventured into either the basement or the attic as the wife was afraid of heights, and the husband had claustrophobia, preferring instead to store their things in the garage.

Occasionally she would play a few tricks on them, but most of the time she settled for being helpful. She needed _something_ to do, or she would go insane. She vanished all the dust, mopped up all the mud, wiped out all the fingerprints, scrubbed out all the stains in the carpet. The Allen family had long ago become accustomed to a house that they never needed to clean, Mrs. Allen especially.

At that moment, Mrs. Allen was washing the dishes, Lydia feeling that they could do their own dishes and laundry. For what felt like the millionth time in the last fifty years, Lydia turned her star over in her hands, watching it explode, then seemingly implode. For a long time, Lydia had been wanting to find out which star it was, but hadn't been able to find any resources.

However, come to think of it, the Allens had a computer, and had recently connected it to the internet . . . With a strange light in her eyes, she tucked the ball under her arm and marched over to the computer. Sitting down, she typed the description quickly into a search engine, and waited for results.

She was rewarded with literally thousands of results. Apparently, big red stars aren't exactly uncommon.

After weeding out all the advertisements for Clifford the Big Red Dog on Ice (t), Lydia was starting to lean towards her star being Antares or Aldebaran.

Another name caught her eye, but as soon as she read it, it struck a chord of _wrongness_. She tried to grasp it with her mind, but the name refused to stay with her, slipping out of her memory the moment she looked away from the screen. She thought about saying it aloud, but the very thought sent her swimming in nausea.

Lydia grasped her chair, wondering desperately what in the world that one word could be, to provoke such a reaction from her.

The knowledge of what it _could_ be, and probably was, was just as evasive, and proving just as frustrating, the feeling that it was something she should know.

She forced herself to say it out loud, as though maybe saying it would force the weirdness away, even though her tongue felt like a block of wood.

"Betelgeuse," she said firmly. And, almost buried under a new wave of wrongness, was a tiny feeling of _rightness_. "Betelgeuse," she repeated, feeling braver. A face popped into her mind, and suddenly, she understood. Leaping to her feet and knocking her chair to the ground, the star rolling away unnoticed, she shrieked out, _"BEETLEJUICE!" _

What landed on the floor in front of her was not what she had been expecting at all, despite the fact that he should have been the first thing she was expecting to see.

_He_ was there, on the floor in front of her, looking dazed and infinitely worse for the wear, positively skeletal. Green eyes set deep in his head, burning fiendishly. Teeth, much sharper than she remembered. Long, ragged nails.

Her scrutiny was cut short as a yellow wave burst forth from his body.

Lydia was thrown backwards into the air and smashed into a wall for the first time in her afterlife. She slid down to the ground, dazed, watching in vague horror as the swirling vortex in front of her sent off another pulse.

She braced herself, crossing her arms in front of her chest and bowing her head. The sickly yellow energy washed over her, stinging like thousands of tiny bees. Her own power tried feebly to reject it, but it was batted away in the pure, overpowering rush of energy that was Beetlejuice.

Then suddenly, the yellow waves checked themselves and came rushing back upon their source, (like the birth of a star) compacting, until finally she could see Beetlejuice in the center. The sickly yellow was sucked inside of him, and then just as suddenly as everything else had been it was over. It was just Lydia and Beetlejuice together alone in a wrecked room.

Lydia was feeling rather faint and weak, having exhausted herself trying to fight off the foreign energies. In front of her, Beetlejuice was making little noises of disbelief, examining the room. He didn't appear to have noticed her yet.

Her clothes made a rustling sound as she slid further down the wall. She was so tired. She just wanted to rest. She noticed with what should have been alarm but wasn't, that her form was growing rather faint. She could see the floor through her hand.

Beetlejuice noticed the sound, whipped around, noticed the woman with the angel's face awkwardly propped up against the wall and fading from sight.

No, that was wrong. That shouldn't be happening. He bounded over, marveling at how little effort it required, moving when he wasn't in pain. In a glorious, painfree moment he was beside her, trying to figure out what was wrong.

The house itself was rocking her, gathering her up into itself, and sending all of the energy it had collected from her over the years back to her.

Neither would ever know just how close Lydia had come to being completely destroyed. Never before had anything or anyone taken the full brunt of his Juice, and it would probably never happen again. The only reason she survived (in a manner of speaking) was because as a direct result of that same blast, the house gained a semi-sentience. It couldn't talk, it couldn't really even think, but it had gained the capacity to feel, and act on the instinct to protect.

So the first thing it did was restore its longtime tenant, Lydia. The next was to block all of the aggressive callings the Netherworld was sending her way, clamoring for the return of Beetlejuice.

Which was a blessing for him. It also blocked off all access to the Netherworld, which meant no more visits to the waiting room, no personal calls from Juno.

It was really indescribably fortunate.

However, neither of them knew any of this. All they knew, was that she no longer felt quite as tired, rather chipper atually, and he was relieved that she hadn't vanished after all.

He opened his mouth, but the words didn't come. He looked at her pleadingly, silently asking her to help him.

Lydia saw this, and felt her heart clench. Only once before had she ever seen Beetlejuice at a loss for words, and it hadn't been like this. Reaching out, she touched his starved face gently, asking him quietly, "What have they done to you B?"

He was bewildered by the question. Where to start? Not much had actually happened, but it seemed too immense for words, too long, too terrible, too painful.

"I -- they put me in a cell. Cell block 1010011010. And they blocked my Juice. It hurt. A lot." Even as he said it, he winced at the terminology. What he'd described sounded like paradise as opposed to what had actually gone on.

But instead of narrowing in scorn, her eyes widened with sympathy, sympathy that he would have rejected from anybody but her. He still didn't remember her name, although he now knew for certain that this was the woman who had figured prominently in his memories and dreams.

"They were about to exorcise me," he added after a minute.

"After waiting fifty-three years?" she asked in dismay. "Why?"

"For biting a man's ear off," he said off-handedly, growing more sure of himself. It was becoming easier to think of things to say. Besides him. Lydia gave a strangled, choking sound, that resembled closely the sound of desperately held back laughter.

Finally, she regained control of herself, and cried in dismay, "Why did you bite his ear off for? What'll he do without it?"

"He can go to Dr. Frankenstein and get a new ear," he told her. It was true, really. Nice guy, a little morbid, but he definitely knew his stuff when it came to piecing together dead people. He had become rather popular among the younger ghosts who would want their limbs reattached, or their head sewn back on.

The monster himself was much more successful in this life than the last, surrounded by plenty who looked far more freakish than him. On the whole he was rather content, if not a little miffed at his creator's success.

Lydia stiffened in dread. "They'll call you back," she whispered, stunned. Beetlejuice stared at her uncomprehendingly, slowly shaking his head. She grabbed his hands, and hissed, "I won't let them! They can kiss my dead, lily-white ass. I won't let them!"

Beetlejuice stumbled away from her, panic starting to grow in his eyes. She followed, insisting, "I won't let them! I _won't_!"

Strangely enough, this calmed him down, and he sat down again, apparently taking her words at face value. But Lydia was wondering how she could keep her promise. It would only be too easy for someone to reach into her mind like they had so long ago, and rip his name from her once again.

So she engraved it on the floor, unwittingly copying what Beetlejuice had done to the ouija board half a century ago. There, like it was a natural part of the grain, was his name, spelled in its correct form, Betelgeuse on the floorboards.

They might go through her mind again, but she doubted they'd take the time to check what was on the floor.

She spent the next couple of hours trying to tug Beetlejuice out of his shell and shove something nourishing in him. Maybe it would help, despite the fact that he was dead and didn't really need to eat.

--


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

The entire time they were talking, the higher-ups in the Netherworld were panicking. Beetlejuice had disappeared mysteriously (and impossibly), and the Carmichael residence had dropped off the map (also impossible).

The general air of triumph they had held at the imminent destruction of one of the most dangerous dead there was, had disappeared immediately. And to be able to make an entire household drop off the planet, so to speak, the way he obviously did . . .

The monster was obviously more of a threat than they had ever realized. All attempts to call him back were proving useless (yet another impossibility), and complaints from all over the Netherworld were burying them alive, with comments that the dangerous ghost's "Juice" had been felt. All over the Netherworld. ALL over.

And they still couldn't find him!!

It was infuriating. They held all his paperwork, they _should_ be able to locate him, wherever he was, at a moment's notice. They always had been before, and that had always been his downfall. No matter how powerful he was, they had always been able to tuck him away into some place where he would be less bothersome.

Since they apparently couldn't do that anymore, who knew what kind of trouble he could get into now?

--

The poltergeist of whom they were so worried about was spending a couple of truly marvelous days absolutely relaxed on Dr. Lydia's orders. His nickname for her, Lyds, had come back to his rusty mind within a day.

Although he was much calmer now, his energy still lay thickly over the entire house, nebulous and restless. It gave the house a strange, heavy feeling, something the Allens noticed very quickly. However, by this point they were quite used to their benevolent ghost, and just assumed it was having an off couple of days.

Beetlejuice was not inclined to be friendly towards the new family. He would much rather have had the entire house to him and his Lyds, than have to share it with _yet another_ set of breathers, especially two that looked just as gullible as the Maitland's had been. (He had remembered them within two days, also his burning hatred of them. But they were gone, and best forgotten.)

But Lydia was fond of them, just a little, and she did not want them scared in the way Beetlejuice would scare them. So she stood up for them, and demanded that he have nothing to do with them, especially after hearing further details about "Dullard".

Then one day, he wandered up into the attic, and spotted several tracings through the dust on the window. Then he had to forcefully hold back tears, for there, preserved in the dust, was that ancient finger drawing of himself with bumpy arms, and Lyds poised to step on him.

It was still there, after what Lydia had told him was fifty-three years. Hell, her _family_ hadn't lasted as long as this silly little drawing.

And that damn model was still sitting on the table, mocking him. He restrained himself from incinerating it, like his first instinct told him to.

Neither of them knew why he hadn't been called back yet. However, Lydia was prepared. Tucked into every corner, his name was written, all over the walls and floor in the attic and basement. Naturally after doing so, Lydia realized she had to hide it from the mortals, and sent a spark of her purple energy around the room, rendering the name invisible to the living.

Remembering back a long time ago, she snapped some catchy reggae tune onto the radio, and dragged Beetlejuice into the air with her, spinning merrily. Just like the first time, she had the furniture performing a congo line. Beetlejuice laughed, his eyes sparkling.

The Allens appeared in the doorway, faces pale. Lydia shrugged, in the middle of performing mid-air ball-room dancing. She was sure they wouldn't mind too much, and even if they did, they could get over it. It was still her house after all.

Within the next thirty minutes, Mr. and Mrs. Allen had joined the congo line, giggling wildly.

Beetlejuice was having the time of his life. More of his memories, buried from trauma, were resurfacing every day, including a rather uncomfortable memory involving Lydia's underwear that still made him blush thinking about it. It also made him want to turn her around just to see if her ass looked as nice as he remembered. However, Lydia would then slap him, and the fun would end, so he kept his hands to himself for the time being.

But the point was, he was recovering from the trauma dealt him, he was spending time with the only woman, he freely admitted (to himself only--and quietly, even then), that he had ever loved, and he was doing the chicken dance up in the air with her while the furniture danced in time. What more could one want?

--

It was three days later when they finally determined (to their confusion) that the council was not going to call him back anytime soon. Beetlejuice was suspicious, and not inclined to believe it, but he couldn't deny that there was no reason for them to wait and see how much mischief he could cause.

They were well aware that they were living on borrowed time. Sooner or later, the council was going to drag him back and have him exorcised. Lydia's only plan was to call him back as soon as he left. It was an easily circumventable plan, unfortunately. There would be no recalling him in the middle of an exorcism. Calling too late seemed all too possible.

So Beetlejuice came up with a plan that was completely insane. Ridiculous. Didn't have a chance.

They started working out the details anyways.

"Here's what we do!" Beetlejuice told her, eyes gleaming. "They got my paperwork, right? So that means they can call me back 'cause of my name, they can trace me, they can do a lot just because of stupid papers. So we sneak in, bust Juno's office, burn the goddamn files, and I'm free as a bird, right?"

Lydia stared at him for a moment, eyes wide. Then she exploded, "That's NUTS! What are you thinking?! You don't want to get exorcised, so you waltz back into the laps of the people who are gonna do it?! What is WRONG with you?!"

Beetlejuice crinkled his forehead at her. "Babe, I think we've been dancing together too much. Everything you say nowadays has comparisons to dancing."

"I'm serious!" she cried.

"So'm I!"

"No you're not!"

"Sure I am."

After a few more minutes, Lydia gave in and went along with the plan, just because she knew even if she didn't approve it, Beetlejuice would just go anyways, and without any foolproofing to his non-existant plan. It would be safer if she went with him.

Safer for him at least. What about her? What about her safety?!

After hours of brainstorming, Lydia gave up. It was obviously destined to remain a simple plan, for while Lydia could plan for getting _into_ the Netherworld and Juno's office; getting the papers, and getting back out were both too sketchy to plan out.

Then came the procrastinating. While rather dangerous, the thought of sitting at home doing nothing was infinitely more comforting than the thought of breaking into offices and burning valuable documents.

However, Beetlejuice would not be deterred, and after three days of nerves and shattering mirrors (The Allens didn't know _what_ to think) he managed to drag her back up to the attic.

Sighing, Lydia picked up the chalk and, muttering to herself, drew the door on the side of the wall, and then stepped back.

Nothing happened.

Lydia cleared her throat. Beetlejuice scuffed his shoes on the floor.

Still, nothing happened.

"Look Lyds, I know its been a while, but I'm pretty sure that something was supposed to happen just there," Beetlejuice informed her.

Lydia stared at the wall for a moment, then threw up her hands and said, "Oh well! I guess we're not going anywhere."

"Maybe the chalk is too old," Beetlejuice mused. He snapped his fingers, a new piece appearing in his hand, and drew over the old lines.

"Come on, let's go!" Lydia cried, laughing nervously.

"Hey, I got it!" he cried, excited. Indeed, the house finally lowered its internal defenses and allowed them out, although its external defenses remained solid. But neither of them knew that. Beetlejuice was pretty certain it had been the chalk.

Exhaling shakily, Lydia followed

--


	14. Chapter 14

Remember Me Babe?

AN: Hurrah, I'm back from the dead! Didja miss me? It's been like, a year, I know, I know. Bad me. Shame on me. For those who have given up on this story for lost, here's a big kiss, and a dedication of this chapter to YOU!

;This Chapter Is Hereby Dedicated To All Former Reader's Who Have Continued Hoping For Another Chapter, And All New Readers Who Are Wondering Where The Hell This Story Came From. Have Fun!;

As always, owning Beetlejuice is a dream well beyond my modest means. So stop suing me!

* * *

Chapter 14:

* * *

As Beetlejuice and Lydia stuck to the shadows in the long, boring corridor, Lydia reflected on several things. First and foremost, was _WHAT IN GOD'S NAME WAS SHE THINKING?!_

Her other thoughts were marginally calmer. One of her more peaceable reflections was remembering how, before she had died, she had just started feeling the painful claw of arthritis in her knuckles. The problem with dying, of course, was that after you were dead it wasn't as though any of your physical ailments _went away. _No, of course not. If you were a cripple in life, you were a cripple in death. If you had painful, debilitating arthritis in life, you had just better learn to unlive with it in the afterlife.

Lydia's arthritis certainly wasn't debilitating, its progress had been limited to the occasional twinge. But here in the hallway, the joints of her fingers hurt like mad. Lydia remembered the old men sitting on their porches rubbing their knees and remarking, "A storm's coming."

Lydia flexed her stiff, painful fingers, and muttered, "A storm's coming."

Little did she know how right she was.

--

Beetlejuice tried hard to keep his mind on task. He had suffered more than he had realized from the lack of movement over the last two weeks than he had thought. His energy, his juice, and his muscles were all aching to be unleashed and cause his trademark destruction. But in this situation; where a single mistake could get him whisked away straight back into his cell, or worse, exorcism, he had to demonstrate more than his usual level of control.

The plan . . . well, the plan was simple. Get Juno out of her office, and go through her records as quick as possible. Snitch his files. Destroy them.

How to get her out? He had no clue. Since she was dead, she didn't need breaks. She had no home to go home to, and she didn't need to eat. Something that he hadn't wasted a lot of thought on before, but she lived in that office.

People died all the time. _They_ don't take breaks.

He stopped in the corridor, stymied. And then, like a miracle, he heard Miss Argentina's shrill voice screaming out, "Juno! Juno, come here quick! You're not going to believe this!"

When no Juno came pounding out of her office immediately, Beetlejuice felt his hopes sink back into his shoes. Miss Argentina apparently noticed as well, because her voice rose even shriller. "JUNO!" she screeched.

The tiny old woman slammed her office door open, puffing cigarette smoke like a train, her face bright red. Beetlejuice pressed himself against the wall and held his breath. She stormed right past him and on, never noticing him there.

He let out a sigh of relief, and offered a grin at Lydia. "Nice ventriloquism job there," he praised her. She offered a wry smile, thinking back to their almost-wedding.

Without wasting any more time, the two dove into her office, and proceeded to tear it apart looking for the records. Lydia upended to filing cabinet, rescuing only the B section, and started flipping through it. Beetlejuice turned her desk on it's side and started going through the drawers, partially, Lydia thought privately, out of spite.

"Beater, nope; Beckett, not even close; Becle, how am I even supposed to pronounce that?Bedle, no; Bedman, nuh-uh; Beet, getting closer; Beetleman, nope; Beeves, uh-uh – Wait! B, your name isn't in here!" she told him, alarmed.

He popped up from underneath Juno's desk. "Try finding it with the other spelling," he suggested.

Lydia bent her head over the records again, and traced her finger down the list. "Bester, BesVue, Besyo, Betag, Betby, Betcher, Betelgeuse . . . There it is!" she gasped softly.

Beetlejuice abandoned Juno's desk and snatched the file out of Lydia's hands, looking at it disbelievingly. "That was so easy," he muttered, eyes wide.

Lydia snorted. "Sure. The hard part will probably be destroying it. Come on, let's get out of here before she comes back." They slunk out through the door, and were a good ways down the never-ending hall when they heard Juno come storming back, complaining none-too-quietly about the "idiot receptionist." They stifled their giggles and kept going.

Lydia shivered. "I can't stand this, just open it here!" she begged. The suspense was (ha ha) killing her. What would Beetlejuice's file look like? What did _any_ ghost's file look like, for that matter?

They hunched over, looming over the file. Slowly, with reverence, Beetlejuice grasped a corner of the binder, and began to pull it open.

_Nice Try _

One sheet of paper peeked out at them, with only those words, _Nice Try_ scrawled on it. Beetlejuice put his head on his knees. Lydia simply stared, too shocked to say anything.

After a moment, Beetlejuice rose and threw the decoy on the floor, his face dark. His shoulder jerked as if he had just been about to turn and then thought better of it. He stared at the binder on the floor, and then leaped into the air.

Lydia jerked in surprise, watching Beetlejuice throwing a silent temper tantrum, stomping on the file until it was mangled beyond repair.

With an air of icy composure, he stepped away from the ruined mass of plastic and twisted metal rings. The act of destroying the binder had been somewhat cathartic for him, and he felt a little better.

"We'll have to keep looking," Lydia finally offered, not being able to think of anything else to say.

And so they kept walking down that miserable corridor looking for something that would give them a hint, like a sign that said, "Records and Registration,". Of course they did not.

After a long, long time of walking, Lydia said wearily, "B, I think this hallway goes on forever. Do we actually have a destination in mind?"

"Of course it goes on forever!" he snapped. "And yes, I'm trying to find the lower levels. Everything always ends up there eventually. It's been a while since I've worked here though, I don't exactly remember where the entrance is."

"Lower levels?"

"Yeah."

"Let me get this straight. My caseworker's office building has _Hell_ in its _basement?!_"

"Yeah, that's about how it is." Beetlejuice smiled reminiscently. "I remember we always used to send the new; you know, the _really raw_ workers down there to put things in storage. Not before telling them all sorts of horror stories about it first, though. There was one who actually pissed his pants going down. And man, if you think normal piss is bad, you should smell _dead-guy_ piss. It's in a league of its own! So he comes back up the stairs smelling like dead-guy piss--"

Lydia sighed and tuned him out. After several long minutes with B droning in her ear, she was broken out of her reverie.

"Ah!" Beetlejuice said, sounding surprised. "Here we are." He stopped in front of what appeared to be a blank wall. Lydia waited for a moment.

She began to feel antsy after a few seconds, and so leant over and whispered, "What now?" in his ear.

He was silent for a moment, then said grandly, "I am _willing _it open!"

"I see," Lydia said, nodding her head. After a moment, she whispered, "Is it working?"

He didn't bother answering.

Suddenly B snapped his fingers. "I've got it!" he exclaimed. He immediately began digging in his vest pocket, mumbling to himself, and pulling out an odd assortment of objects, such as one of Lydia's hair ribbons, several snakes, and a three-legged bar stool.

"Not there," he muttered, and continued emptying out his pockets. A small piece of paper fluttered down near Lydia's feet, and she picked it up, about to ask B if it was what he wanted, when she caught sight of the drawing on its other side.

It was a near picture-perfect rendering of her seventeen-year old self, every detail etched with exquisite care. The largeness of her eyes was exaggerated, as well as the fullness of her lips, but otherwise it was eerily faithful. The paper was worn and soft from handling, with deep creases lining it. Whatever its significance to B, it had received a lot of attention from him.

Lydia hastily folded it and stuffed it in her own pocket. For some reason, she didn't want B to know she had seen it. Presently, B was shoulder deep in his own hip pocket, face screwed up in concentration.

"Aha!" he shouted, retracting his arm with a dirty, cracked laminated card gripped tight in his grubby fist.

"I don't think your card is going to work here anymore, B. Taking an ex-employee off the employee list is one of the first things any business will do, standard procedure." Lydia pointed out.

B stuck his card into a crack in the wall, and a section of the wall rolled back, accompanied by a stinking cloud of brimstone.

"Or... not. I guess," Lydia said.

"Lyds, nobody's ever been _fired_ from the afterlife before. There _isn't_ any standard procedure. As far as security is concerned, I still work here."

"Shoddy," Lydia muttered. She paused to think. "Good for us though, I guess."

Beetlejuice and Lydia tentatively began to descend into what was commonly known as the First Level of Hell, according to Dante.

Lydia found it to be surprisingly tame. Accountants sitting on a pool of ice, chained to their desks, scrabbling furiously with quill pens as a whip wielded by an unseen antagonist struck him every fifteen minutes or so in a bored, lazy arc. A thin man straining desperately to hold up the immense bookshelf threatening to crush him. A mailman running eternally from an enormous fanged Cerberus. None of the punishments were especially horrible, although none of them were pleasant either. All of them were too involved in their own misery to notice two other ghosts.

"Kinda boring, isn't it?" Lydia remarked.

"Not for them, I'm sure," B said. "But yeah, you're right. This is where they stick all the people that don't belong in the deeper levels. That's where you'll see some of the really awful stuff." Beetlejuice leaned in close and whispered conspiratorially, "I went down there once. Saw a man tied up head to toe so he couldn't move, with a snake dripping venom on his head. Jesus, how he screamed!"*

Lydia groaned and pushed him away, shuddering.

"Well, look at that," B said softly. In the distance was an enormous bookcase. Just above it was the much-longed for sign, _Records and Registration. _Lydia screamed with laughter. "Of course its in Hell! Where else would it be?" she cackled.

The two of them set off flying towards it, jubilantly feeling that their task was nearly complete. However, fifteen minutes later, when the bookcase seemed only marginally closer, they were beginning to feel a little frustrated.

"Is it one of those hell things?" Lydia asked _another_ fifteen minutes later. "You know, where you can see something but it never gets any closer?"

"No," Beetlejuice said uneasily. "I think it might actually be so tremendously huge that you can't tell how far away it is. Remember, it's got every name of every person that ever was in there!"

"Well, this is just getting ridiculous!" Lydia huffed yet another fifteen minutes later.

_I know I shouldn't use my juice here – too easy to track or something like that. But really! What could the harm be if I only do it once?_

Thus reasoned, Beetlejuice grabbed onto Lydia, and popped away with her.

Once they had repopped, Lydia screamed. Not because Beetlejuice had just potentially exposed them, although that was bad. But because the bookcase was so terrifyingly huge. It stretched further up than she could possibly see, and it's sides went on for miles, finally disappearing in a dim haze. And the entire thing was filled with ordinary looking books, all completely uniform and unremarkable except for the last name printed on every single one. _Zzkeney._

"Well," Lydia said briskly. "Let's start looking!"

It took another repop by Beetlejuice to get them the many miles up the bookcase where the _B'_s were located. And, many hours later, Lydia had finally managed to work her way past the last _Baker_. B, six rows beneath her, seemed to be having no better luck. He had just gotten past the last _Bakfa_, apparently an ethnic name.

"Hey, B!" Lydia suddenly shouted. "Why are we doing this the hard way? Can't you just juice your book over to us?"

"I thought you told me not to use it out here under any cir-circumstances?" he shouted back

"You've already used it twice, once more can't hurt. Besides, if you get the book, we can get rid of it, and we won't have to _worry_ about that anymore!" she called back.

Unable to deny her logic, Beetlejuice took a deep breath, let his juice flex its metaphorical muscles, and, using a great deal of restraint he felt, used only just barely enough to call his file towards him.

Nothing happened for a long few minutes. Beetlejuice craned his head, waiting. Lydia suggested trying again. He scratched his head in puzzlement.

Just then, miles downward, a small speck came into view, hurtling upwards at a murderous speed. Even from that great distance, an ominous whistling sound could be heard, growing louder every second.

In almost no time at all, the book blasted by Beetlejuice, nearly taking his head off, his file disappearing into the misty gloom above them.

Lydia clung to her shelf, frozen in shock. The force from the file's descent had almost ripped her off of her perch. Sure, she would have had plenty of time to collect herself and remember that she could fly. She would probably also have had enough time to fix her hair, do her laundry, write a book, and make dinner before she hit the ground. Still, it had been rather unnerving.

Lydia shook her head, feeling sufficiently recovered, and had the book pop into her hand.

"Ouch!" she cried, involuntarily dropping the book and wringing her hand. "It burned me!"

Beetlejuice, who was a couple of shelves below her (trying to sneak a peek under her skirt as usual) managed to catch it before it disappeared again. The book glowed faintly, and seemed to shrink slightly. It's title illuminated itself in a gentle green glow.

_Betelgeuse,_ it read in lovely, flowing script. _How unlike the man himself,_ Lydia mused. Beetlejuice was holding the book with a look of awe on his face.

"Lookit this babe! A whole whopper of a book, just about me!" he squealed, doing a slow, continuous back flip.

"It's probably your criminal record," Lydia pointed out dryly.

"Yeah..." B said, stroking the cover lovingly. Lydia was feeling a little worried by the open affection he was showing it.

"Remember B, this little book is what's keeping you a prisoner of your own name," Lydia hinted.

Beetlejuice's back snapped up straight, his eyes blazing. "That's right! I'd almost forgotten," he said bemusedly. He abruptly shook off the last vestiges of whatever glamor the book had put him under, and poised the tome for destruction. Although... it _was _pretty cool having a book about _you, _and it looked so harmless...

"B!" Lydia shouted in exasperation.

"Oh, right," Beetlejuice said, shaking his head and proceeding to blow up the chronicles of his existence.

It was astonishingly difficult to destroy. It caught fire easily, but the fire didn't seem to actually harm it. In the end however, all it made for was a very pretty display of fireworks.

And then the lights went out.

It only occurred to Lydia to wonder where the light had actually been coming from in the first place later. Looking back, she realized that the sun had obviously never had anything to do with the place; and the dim, amber light that cast no shadows had no visible external source. And then it was gone.

Fairly quickly, any afterimages were chased away by a vortex of swirling black and white. The bookcase, the dull background, and the mist overhead had all disappeared. But Beetlejuice was still there! Looking quite different, and yet exactly the same. Maybe he looked cleaner. The dust on his infamous suit was certainly gone.

"Beetlejuice," he whispered.

It took Lydia all of thirty seconds to understand the implications of this one word. When she finally grasped it, her breath hitched in her throat.

"It worked," she gasped.

"Beetlejuice!" he howled, shrieking with demented laughter. "My name is BEETLEJUICE!"

With a bump, Lydia was back in the first level of hell. Instantly, she worried that something had gone wrong, and Beetlejuice saying his own name had broken some kind of spell. But then she noticed the change in the room. It had shrunk, she could barely fit in it anymore, and the walls bulged and heaved like they were trying to keep something out. The swirling vortex of black and white (with the odd dash of green) was still swirling, just beyond the edges of her vision. If she turned her head quickly enough, she could stare straight at it for a millisecond or two.

The bookcase was right in front of her. She leaned down and picked it up, brought it to eye level. It seemed so insignificant as compared to a few hours ago.

_"What are you going to do with it?"_ Beetlejuice's voiced mused sensuously in her ear. Yes it is was sensuous, no doubt. His voice had changed too, although she couldn't for the unlife of her tell how.

She mused for just a second on his question, not his tone, and with no further hesitation, closed her fist firmly. The splinter of the fragile wood between her fingers made a satisfying crunch.

Then everything disappeared except her own power and potential that had been hidden from her, and now rushed through her, dumping her in waves of black and red. Just for a moment, she was all-powerful.

Then she snapped back, feeling her restriction to her house falling away like a tattered garment she had slipped off. Her eyes sparked, her hair crackled, and her nails and teeth grew long, pointy and jagged, a pleasant itchy sensation accompanying them.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" someone screamed.

Beetlejuice turned around lazily. He hardly wanted to be bothered by such an annoying and obviously insignificant individual right now, but the voice was persistent.

It was Juno. She too was smoking and sparking as a result of her files being destroyed, but it was nothing like what he and Lyds were feeling. And for once, she was flummoxed. Her rage and fear left her stuttering.

"You! You-you BASTARD! Do you have ANY idea what its like out there?! The people – we can't TRACK them – our system's been destroyed! Ghosts breaking out of their homes! Hell suddenly open for anybody to-to just WALTZ OUT! None of the new ghosts – We can't FIND them now!" she steamed.

"No order! No rules! Every fucker just going around doing whatever the HELL he feels like doing!" Juno paused and stuffed an additional cigarette in her mouth, her hands shaking.

"And we can't CONTROL them! Every freshly dead jackass going around with ALL their new powers! Some of them are STRONGER than us!"

She shivered with impotent rage.

"Of course we'll begin recovery immediately, but... there's no recovery for this. We're ruined,"

"You mean the bureaucracy; the miles and miles of red tape, the restrictions, the jackassery, all of this is gone? For good? For some reason, I'm not devastated. Huh. Imagine that!" Beetlejuice sneered. "Maybe things'll actually get better!"

"No, you idiot!" Juno sneered back. "Things will _not _"get better". They'll get worse! Anarchy, lawlessness, wars! Our existence will eventually be discovered by the living, and that will be an unmitigated disaster!"

She took a deep sigh, and rubbed the side of her face, puffing furiously. "I've been instructed to take the two of you into custody," she muttered, sounding drained.

Beetlejuice began to cackle. He snatched Lydia's hand, and with a balletic swirl, the two of them were gone.

* * *

In a nursing home in Illinois, an ancient man bobbed in his rocking chair, hardly noticing when someone sat on him – and then through him. He was a ghost, and had been for a long time. Unfortunately, he had died senile enough that he still didn't know it.

But now something had changed. He looked up, startled. Things were becoming clearer. His mind was regaining its former nimbleness. He stood up out of his rocking chair, stretching and groaning, and realized with a start that he was dead.

By now he resembled his own self as he looked at thirty years old, a vast improvement. Not seeing what was keeping him at the nursing home, he wandered out, wondering how he was supposed to get to the hereafter.

His former life was coming back to him bit by bit, and most of it was enough to make him wonder what the point was to life. Had it really ended so badly? What had been the point?

He wandered around aimlessly, occasionally bumping into other ghosts, who all seemed unreasonably anxious or outraged about something.

"Eddie!" someone shrieked desperately.

Eddie pulled up short. Could that someone be shouting for _him_? Who had he met in his entire life who would be shouting like that just for _him_? Nobody. Not even Fantasy, not even Sarah. Maybe his mother. But she was dead.

But then again, so was he. Was there any chance at all?

He whipped around. Yes, it was! She was swooping out of the sky, landing in front of him, just as he remembered her, black hair, deep eyes, and a motherly, comforting hug.

"Hi mom," he said shyly, hugging her gently by the shoulders.

And Lydia was happy, surrounded by her two favorite men. How did she feel about Beetlejuice? Well, that could wait until later. She owed him a lot. And she had her _son _back! Her son, whom she had despaired of ever seeing again!

* * *

With the virtual destruction of the afterworld, there were only two options left, two paths to go. Either the dead and the living coexisted peacefully, or they did not. The dead could not remain hidden for much longer. Already, the existence of an afterlife had been revealed in some areas, and time would tell everywhere else.

Either way, Betelgeuse and Lydia Carmichael (née Deetz) would make history. Only time would tell if they would be the heroes, or the scapegoats

* * *

That's all! I don't think I'm writing a sequel, I had to kick myself pretty hard just to get this out. If anybody is interested in taking it up for me, go ahead and give me a call.


End file.
